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Lean Manufacturing
Overview
In the last chapter, we introduced the concept of a visual factory as a fundamental
approach to improvement. In this chapter, we will discuss the notion of removing
waste (nonvalue activities) not only from individual processes but also from the
entire organization. The terminology for this methodology is Lean manufacturing.
Even though the consensus is that Lean manufacturing as applied today
is derived from Toyota’s principles of Lean production methods, the roots of
the process are in Henry Ford’s integrated philosophy in the Rouge Complex
in Dearborn, Michigan, in the early 1900s. The difference between Ford’ ...