Lean Manufacturing

In 1950, the automotive company Toyota developed a production strategy with the objective of eliminating processes and operations that do not add value and reducing waste. The Japanese culture directly influenced the discipline for the application of these innovative production methods, creating a production management system with a high participation of the entire organization and, mainly, of the collaborators involved in the elimination of waste. It also aims to optimize spaces, bring parts closer to production processes, not accumulate inventories, create highly efficient work teams, generate control panels for measuring and monitoring all processes that add value to the business. Finally, it seeks to generate communications in the organization in a simple and effective way, seeking to involve collaborators as owners of the generation of product quality.

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Another novelty that arises is this change in methodology is what the North Americans called “visual management”, which encouraged processes to have visual indicators in operational positions. This allowed the processes to be measured in a simple way and in the hands of the operators themselves.

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Toyota acquires knowledge about "Statistical Process Control" that had already been developed by Ford in the United States. This process stood out as a new quality system introduced in its production strategy.

Another novelty that emerged in those years within industrial processes is the concept (PDCA Cycle) as support for the philosophy KAIZEN (continuous improvement of productivity) generating a simple tool to address continuous improvement. 

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It was not until 1990, after the publication of the book The Machine that changed the world by Womack, Jones and Roos, that the concept of Lean Manufacturing (Lean, Clean Production) was born.