Introduction: ‘Lean production system’ is a very popular generic mass production management system. It is also known as ‘Toyota Production System’. Lean system develops highly responsive systems whereby companies produce “goods and services exactly when they are needed: not before they are needed so that they wait as inventory, nor after they are needed so that it is the customers who have to wait”. (Slack, 2001) It is based on three key principles, eliminate waste, involving everyone and continuous improvement. The lean system was developed by Taiichi Ohno at Toyota in the 1950s. Taiichi was a manufacturing manager and was facing difficulties because of poor supply conditions. He couldn’t plan ahead as he couldn’t predict the supply of raw materials. This was causing cash flow problems as the plan was making more and more unfinished vehicles that couldn’t be sold. To identify which parts were missing he developed a system for linking production stages together very closely a...
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