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Dustin Gallagher
September 22, 2014
MKTG 335G
Professor Anderson
Lean Production: More than Just a Factory Initiative
An analysis on the concept of lean production not only shows its high importance and
benefit on manufacturing production costs and profit, but, also has proven fertile for the
improvement of non-factory areas. This paper will define lean production and its pivotal place in
manufacturing and how the concepts of lean production have expanded to other areas in
business, helping shape and improve our economy and society as a whole.
Lean production is a manufacturing process that is used in the Japanese production
industry. Its origins start with the company Toyota in the 1950’s. The phrase “lean production”
was first coined by John Krafcik in 1988 in an article he wrote for this Master’s thesis. Lean
production refers to eliminating as much “waste” as possible in the manufacturing process. Waste
is defined as any activity that does not add value from a customer’s perspective [ CITATION
Vor10 \l 1033 ].
The concept of lean production, which has been very profitable and successful, has
evolved from just a factory concept to other areas of business as well. This concept is used
widely in companies to also help employees improve their work and eliminate “waste” in our
own lives. For example, Boeing is an extremely large company who manufactures and produces
aircrafts. In an extremely competitive market that is demanding lower prices, Boeing uses lean
manufacturing daily, because without it Boeing would surely fail. Ross Bogue, who is the vice
president of manufacturing for Boeing voiced the importance of lean production in the
competitive market when he said, “In order to meet and beat them (Airbus) in the marketplace,
Boeing must become more and more efficient each day. The way we’ve been able to demonstrate
this is through lean manufacturing.”[ CITATION Jen02 \l 1033 ]
Lean production has also proved extremely fertile for Boeing in other areas of their
company besides the factories. In St. Louis an engineer team who builds Super Hornet Strike
Fighters for Boeing have been able to use lean production to improve their process of making
changes on projects. They took a normal 15 step process and narrowed it down to four steps.
They implemented a pull system for their engineering changes which is where changes are only
generated when a shop team would ask for them. In a trial of the lean principles, cycle time went
