What is LEAN Enterprise?
Lean Enterprise represents a radical rethinking and redefining of those processes that optimize the production of products or services. The term lean was first used in 1984 at MIT in an international conference on the future of the automobile. It referred at the time to production methods pioneered by Toyota. One of the first full blown applications of lean processes in the United States was at the New United Motors Plant in Fremont, California, a joint venture of Toyota and General Motors. However, even though lean manufacturing processes were championed in the mid-twentieth century by Toyota, many of the key aspects of lean manufacturing were described by Henry Ford in his 1923 book, My Life and Work, and used at Fords Highland, Michigan Plant early in the twentieth century. Over time, the lean approach to work process improvement has been expanded to apply to many industries. Lean Enterprise is now recognized as the term for a set of fundamental operational improvement services that
