LEAN METAMORPHOSIS: At the heart of lean thinking is constant change, like the metamorphosis of a butterfly over and over, creating improved manufacturing

摘要

"LEAN MANUFACTURING" has been taken to heart by both process and discrete manufacturing, though as with any manufacturing approach-at least any that is generally regarded as worth pursuing-the outline and details have gotten a little fuzzy through interpretation and individual differences in application. Lean is an approach that neatly places the familiar needs of manufacturing-throughput, acceptable quality, cost containment and flexibility to meet more or less fickle customer desires-under a single set of corollaries: Do anything that will create value; stop doing anything that creates waste or fails to add value. For the purist, it is the Toyota Production System (which, ironically, owes much to what people in 1915 were calling the Ford System). If you are among the rapidly dwindling group on the outside looking in, lean consists of a lot of promising tools and a handful of Japanese terms.