Lean Enterprise - A business system for organizing and managing product development, operations, suppliers, and customer relations. Business and other organizations use lean principles, practices, and tools to create precise customer value—goods and services with higher quality and fewer defects—with less human effort, less space, less capital, and less time than the traditional system of mass production.
Many of the key principles were pioneered by Henry Ford, who was the first person to integrate an entire production system, under what he termed “flow production." Following World War II, the Toyota Motor Company adapted Ford’s principles as a means of compensating for its challenge of limited human, financial, and material resources. The Toyota Production System (or TPS), which evolved from this need, was one of the first managerial systems using lean principles throughout the enterprise to produce a wide variety of products at lower volumes and many fewer defects than competitors.
Leaders today in a wide range of industries, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, healthcare, and other areas are finding ways to apply the principles of lean as a means of producing goods and delivering services that creates value for the customer with the minimum amount of waste and the maximum degree of quality.

•Venetians understood “flow” production by 1400’s and used it to build ships.
•British and French militaries used standard parts around 1800’s for weapons
•Production cells were introduced in 1818 at a US arsenal manufacturing facility
•Meatpackers in the US understood assembly line principle by 1880.
•Door milk delivery in the mid 1900s had a “kanban” system.
•Henry Ford took each of these techniques and developed the first total system.
By 1914, Ford’s, Highland Park plant introduced “flow production” to the automotive work.
•Ford developed a comprehensive gauging system to prevent bad part from being made.
(poka yoke)
•Ford moved the processes to the product (cells manufacturing), had interchangeable parts and implemented standard work processes.
•Toyota sent several of their top executives to
Ford in the early 50’s. They learned Ford’s system, improved it, and developed it into the Toyota Production System (TPS).

Traditional Manufacturing

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Large batches of identical parts, push to forecast
•Make activities efficient
•Plants arranged in process groups
•Develop systems to catch errors
•carry large inventories to meet delivery requirements

Lean Manufacturing

•Small lot sizes, mixed production, pull from customer
•Make process flow
•Plant arranged according to process flow
•Work to prevent errors and eliminate waste
•Improve delivery performance by having short cycle times with minimal Work-in-process and finished goods inventory

Typical measures that drive Lean strategies:

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Total Process Cycle time ( “Throughput time”)
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Process step cycle time
(VA + NVA time)
–
Worker cycle time

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Machine cycle time
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Value added percent ( time )
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TAKT time (customer demand )
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Yield percent of theoretical ( parts )
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Inventory levels before/after each step, + finished goods
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Change-over time