The Lean Myth: The Overselling of Lean in Manufacturing

Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of lean principles. The problem I have is the conventional wisdom that it must also incorporate lean manufacturing (Kanban).

Lean principles can be applied to any manufacturing discipline. They provide for excellent advice and improve the process greatly - so much so that we see them used for many aspects of business and life.

In this article, I want to expose some of the myths regarding lean manufacturing and identify how some of these philosophies are actually hurting business.

History of Lean

I was certified APICS CPIM in the early 1980s. One of the courses of study was "Just in Time". Just in time was based on the Toyota Production System (TPS). At that time, it was generally felt this manufacturing model was not practical for most US manufacturers. The problem was that US auto manufacturers had much greater control over the performance of their vendors. There were, however, some very exciting things that came out of the course. It was a better definition and refinement of processes for improving manufacturing. These are principles I still apply today.

The book The Machine That Changed the World and the subsequent book Lean Thinking, published in 1990 in 1996, respectively, were the first references that described lean thoroughly. It was also based on TPS and is generally believed to be a repackaging of just-in-time.

Here is where it becomes interesting. In 1997 the Lean Enterprise Institute was formed as a nonprofit educational, publishing, and research organization. It was an organization in direct competition with APICS, which ...