Lean Manufacturing evolved in response to the need of flexible, quick production by manufacturing companies by maintaining quality though keeping the costs low as well.
Lean organizations have a customer-focused strategy which focuses on identifying and exploiting changes in market and competitive advantage. They have flexible structures which encourage individual initiative and feedback path to pinpoint defects, errors, and deficiencies. It concerns with standardized work and having strength in problem identification and resolution.
Lean Manufacturing has evolved over times and its origins go back to 17th century. Eli Whitney the inventor of the cotton gin, developed with perfection the idea of interchangeable parts or parts that can be taken from one product and be exchanged with another similar product in about 1799 during a contract from the U.S. Army for the manufacture of 10,000 muskets for a low price though they were made individually.
In the next 100 years manufacturing companies developed the system of engineering drawings or blueprints along with modern tools were perfected and large scale processes such as making steel were focused like in 1890’s Frederick W. Taylor began to look at individual workers and work methods. Frank Gilbreth added Motion Study and invented Process Charting. Lillian Gilbreth introduced psychology by studying the motivations of workers and how attitudes affected the outcome of a process. These ideas led to waste elimination, a key component of JIT and Lean Manufacturing.
In 1910, Henry Ford developed and implemented the first comprehensive Manufacturing Strategy by arranging all the elements of a manufacturing system like people, machines, tooling and products, in a continuous system or an assembly line for manufacturing the Model T automobile. Ford was so incredibly successful he quickly became one of the world’s richest men and put the world on wheels. Ford is considered by many to be the first practitioner of Just In Time and Lean Manufacturing.
