《Lean Performance ERP Project Management 4》.pdfVIP

3 LEAN PERFORMANCE METHODOLOGY WHAT IS THE LEAN ENTERPRISE? Where can lean thinking be used? It is the premise of this book that it can be used on any job, in any process, in any manufacturer or service sector firm, in any economy, regardless of the size of a firm, level of technology, operator skill, or professional staff employed. In lean produc- tion, the system is the complete set of processes required to produce the product in the producing company. A company is lean when lean prin- ciples, tools, and practices are applied to all processes in the company. In their 1996 publication, Lean Thinking, Womack and Jones (two of the authors of the original Massachusetts Institute of Technology study discussed in Chapter 1) describe the phenomenon of applying lean pro- duction principles to all processes in a company and to all processes in the chain of companies involved in producing a product. The concept of lean enterprise extends the process definition to include all processes required to produce the product in all the companies that play a role in producing the materials, components, supplies, etc., for that product. We are reminded in Lean Thinking (p. 239) that “the machine that changed the world” relies upon “Toyota’s interconnected ideas about Product Development, Production, Supply Chain Management, and Customer Rela- tions systems [italics added].” When lean companies are linked in a business activity to produce product together, they are a lean enterprise. When lean companies are linked in a business activity to produce pro