From the course: Six Sigma: White Belt

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History of Lean

History of Lean

From the course: Six Sigma: White Belt

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History of Lean

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- The history of lean stems from many things. But the one that stands out to me is Henry Ford. His focus was not on organizational structure. His focus was on making the best product possible. To do so, he relentlessly pursued methods that eliminated waste and helped employees work more efficiently. He didn't focus on making people work harder. Ford relentlessly emphasized the need to analyze every step in every process to see if it created value before finding a way to do it better. Otherwise the step should be eliminated. While Ford created techniques that led to lean methodologies, the one area he did not account for was variation. His processes, while revolutionary, did not allow for the types of variations that modern businesses require. In short, he was great at making a model T car but when people wanted something other than a model T there were challenges. However, the Toyota production system or TPS took Ford's…

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