What Is Lean Manufacturing?
- Lean Manufacturing
- A production philosophy and operational methodology, rooted in the Toyota Production System (TPS), that systematically identifies and eliminates waste from every step of a process in order to deliver maximum value to the customer with minimum resource expenditure. The term “Lean” was coined by James Womack, Daniel Jones, and Daniel Roos in their landmark 1990 study The Machine That Changed the World, which analysed Toyota’s manufacturing superiority.
Womack and Jones quantified the advantage: Toyota’s plants produced vehicles in approximately half the time, with half the defects, and half the space of comparable Western manufacturers. Lean was the explanation — not automation, not investment, but a fundamentally different approach to how work flows through a system.
What Are the 5 Lean Principles?
Womack and Jones distilled Lean into five core principles in Lean Thinking (1996):
- Specify Value — Define value from the customer’s perspective. Value is only what the customer is willing to pay for. Everything else is potential waste.
- Map the Value Stream — Identify every step in the process that delivers value, and every step that does not. The gap between the two is the improvement opportunity.
- Create Flow — Eliminate interruptions, bottlenecks, and batch-and-queue thinking so that value-adding work flows continuously from order to delivery.
- Establish Pull — Produce only what the customer needs, when they need it, in the quantity they need. Do not push inventory into the system ahead of demand.
- Pursue Perfection — Continuously reduce waste, defects, and lead time. Perfection is the asymptote — never fully reached but always pursued.
What Are the 8 Wastes in Lean (TIMWOODS)?
| Letter | Waste | Example |
|---|---|---|
| T | Transport | Moving materials or information unnecessarily between locations |
| I | Inventory | Excess raw materials, WIP, or finished goods held beyond immediate need |
| M | Motion | Unnecessary movement by people (reaching, walking, searching) |
| W | Waiting | Idle time when people, machines, or materials are waiting for the next step |
| O | Overproduction | Making more than the customer needs, sooner than needed |
| O | Over-processing | Doing more work or using more complex methods than the customer requires |
| D | Defects | Errors requiring rework, scrap, or correction |
| S | Skills (unused) | Failing to utilise people’s knowledge, creativity, and capability |
Related Lean and Process Improvement Resources
- 5 Step Problem Solving Approach
- Plan Do Check Act: The Continuous Improvement Cycle
- Process Flow Charts: Mapping and Improving Processes
- Problem Solving Strategies: Choosing the Right Tool
The following section contains our original Lean Manufacturing definition guide.
The Standard definitions
There are a number of standard Lean Manufacturing Definitions……..
“Lean is a Business philosophy that continuously shortens the time between customer order and shipment by eliminating anything that increases the cost of production and time of delivery to customers.” – Eaton Corporation
“Lean Manufacturing is an operational strategy oriented toward achieving the shortest possible cycle time by eliminating waste.” – Rockford Consulting
“the philosophy of continually reducing waste in all areas and in all forms; an English phrase coined to summarize Japanese manufacturing techniques (specifically, the Toyota Production System).” – Beyond Lean
“A passionate belief that there’s always a simpler, better way…continuous drive to identify and eliminate WASTE”
The common theme
Pretty much, wherever you go in your search for the ideal Lean Manufacturing Definition, there are commonalities. The following pointers tend to spring up:
- Elimination of waste
- Shorten Lead Times
- Strategy or Philosophy
Strategic
Lean must be strategic: It has to be implemented as part of a business strategy, and therefore deployed in the organisation using a structured approach. This advance takes time, as it must address the hardest part: cultural change.
Elimination of Waste
Through a relentless pursuit to eliminate waste, operations can be conducted more efficiently and at less cost. There are real productivity gains to be made, and some typical productivity improvements can be increased by 40%+. An efficient process means an agile one – which can quickly adapt to customer demands.
Shorten Leadtimes
If you eliminate NVA in your business processes and end to end value streams, you will shorten Leadtimes. That means, the time it takes to produce a product or service will shorten.
By shortening leadtimes and removing waste, your operations will be more efficient, therefore your margins should increase and your operation becomes a great deal more competitive than before.
Lean Manufacturing Definition
In light of the above areas of thought, the definition i prefer to use encompasses the fact that when deploying Lean you are in pursuit of waste elimination, cultural change to enforce an improving culture and more output and throughput with less resource, and so the definition i use is:
“A Strategy, which strives to embed a culture of continuous improvement, whereby everyone seeks to identify and eliminate waste, enabling the business to deliver customer expectations at minimal cost and lead time.”