Lean Production innovation - in manufacturing systems

world, Eiji Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno pioneered the concept of lean production at the Toyota car company. And now, although superimposing the method on existing mass production systems causes pain and upheaval, manufacturers around the world are trying to embrace this innovative system. B Perhaps the best way to describe lean production is to compare it with the two other major manufacturing systems: craft production and mass production. The craft producer uses highly skilled workers and simple but flexible tools to make exactly what the customer asks for one item at a time. A present day example of this method is the customised production of a few exotic sports cars. The concept of craft production remains very popular, but the problem with it is obvious. Goods produced by the craft method - as cars once exclusively were - cost too much for most of us to afford. So at the beginning of the twentieth century, mass production was developed as an alternative method. The mass producer uses narrowly skilled professionals to design products which are then made by unskilled or semi-skilled workers, using expensive, single-purpose machines. These churn out standardised products in very high volumes. Because the machinery costs so…