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Keywords Lean production, Learning organizations
Abstract The application of lean thinking has made a significant impact both in academic and industrial circles over the last decade. Fostered by a rapid spread into many other industry sectors beyond the automotive industry, there has been a significant development and "localisation" of the lean concept. Despite successful "lean" applications in a range of settings however, the lean approach has been criticised on many accounts, such as the lack of human integration or its limited applicability outside high-volume repetitive manufacturing environments. The resulting lack of definition has led to confusion and fuzzy boundaries with other management concepts. Summarising the lean evolution, this paper comments on approaches that have sought to address some of the earlier gaps in lean thinking. Linking the evolution of lean thinking to the contingency and learning organisation schools of thought, the objective of this paper is to provide a framework for understanding the evolution of lean not only as a concept, but also its implementation within an organisation, and point out areas for future research.
Introduction
A brief history of lean
The origins of lean thinking can be found on the shop-floors of Japanese manufacturers and, in particular, innovations at Toyota Motor Corporation (Shingo, 1981, 1988; Monden, 1983; Ohno, 1988). These innovations, resulting from a scarcity of resources and intense domestic competition in the Japanese market for automobiles, included the just-in-time QIT) production system, the kanban method of pull production, respect for employees and high levels of employee problem-solving/automated mistake proofing. This lean operations management design approach focused on the elimination of waste and excess from the tactical product flows at Toyota (the Toyota "seven wastes") and represented an alternative model to that of capital-intense mass production (with its large batch sizes, dedicated assets and "hidden wastes"). For a full account of these systems, methods, processes and techniques see Monden (1983). Much of the early work at Toyota was applied under the leadership of Taiichi Ohno to car engine manufacturing during the 1950s, later to vehicle assembly (1960s), and the wider supply chain (1970s). It was only at this latter point that supplier manuals were produced and the "secrets" of this lean approach were shared with companies outside Toyota for the first time. These...