At the end of the 1890's, Frederick W Taylor, the father of scientific management became the first to introduce what are now known as standardization and best practices. His work led to the development of time and motion studies and error-proofing and poka-yoke by Shigeo Shingo, who used Taylor's work as inspiration.
Frank Gilbreth later introduced the concept of breaking work down into elementary time blocks. It was around this time that the first notions of eliminating waste and studying movement began to emerge.
In 1910, Henry Ford invented the assembly line for his standardized Ford Model T while focusing on the concept of waste while developing his mass assembly manufacturing system. Alfred P. Sloan later improved on Ford’s system when he introduced the concept of assembly line diversity at GM.
After the Second World War, Kiichiro Toyoda, founder of Toyota, developed the idea of "Kaizen", or continous improvement when he decided he must stop the repairing of poor quality by intensely studying each stage of the process. Inspired by the supermarkets he has visited in the USA and given the financial situation during the period, over-production had to be avoided, and the notion of Pull (building to order rather), rather than Push (target driven) was developed.
It was with Taiichi Ohno that these themes of lean came together and with Shingeo Shingo, created the “Just In Time”, “Waste Reduction” and “Pull System” concepts for Toyota, which, together with other flow management techniques, resulted in the Toyota Production System (TPS).
The TPS has been continuously evolving since. In 1990, James Womack summarized these concepts to create Lean Manufacturing at a time when Japanese expertise was spreading to America and the success achieved by companies applying these principles and techniques became relevant undeniable.
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