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What is Lean production?

Lean organization or production is a term whose content is precisely defined by the book The Machine That Changed the World by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, Daniel Roos, and Donna Sammons Carpenter.

Lean as a social organization

The book The Machine That Changed the World compares the production organization put in place by Toyota and some Japanese companies in the second half of the 20th century, which it qualifies as Lean, with that of automobile companies in the rest of the world, which it qualifies as Taylorist. It also compares the social organization, the organization of the subcontractor ecosystem, financing, and the client relationship. It finally compares the way value is distributed among these entities.

Taken as a whole, Lean is a social contract that existed in Japan during the second half of the 20th century. Employees accept to do whatever needs to be done (as opposed to only what corresponds to their status), and to train themselves, and in return they receive lifetime employment (shūshin koyō), the possibility to shape the organization of their work, and a greater recognition of their skills. This social contract may have been dictated by the fact that in post-war Japan, there were few capitals and no immigrants to fill the low-end social positions, unlike what was happening in Europe and North America.

However, Lean is an area where the lobbying power of consultants is so strong that even the corresponding Wikipedia article is strongly biased towards presenting Lean as a simple set of production optimization tools and managerial reform.

Lean as a production organization system

The book The Machine That Changed the World opposes two antinomic modes of production organization:

The major goals of Lean production are:

In practice, the main effect of a Lean organization is to maximize the effect of continuous improvement.
The shift from a Taylorist to a Lean organization of work mainly relies on the determined implementation of strict communication rules focused on problem-solving, which limit the natural human tendency to prioritize alliance-playing.

Why is Lean relevant in the West in the 21st century?

Lean is particularly relevant for 21st-century production for two reasons:

Lean and information technology

Lean poses a considerable problem in terms of information technology, which is only solvable in practice with the use of a specific tool such as Storga:

Conversely, what is called 'agile methods,' and presented in an abusive way as Lean information technology, in fact corresponds to a software development mode that still relies on the relational model, but where deployment is carried out progressively, to encourage feedback from the field. In practice, this leads to a continuous improvement that stagnates because of the information technology, right after the end of the initial development phase, due to the rigidity of the relational model.

Go deeper

See the question 'What does Parkinson's Law teach us?'
See chapter 2 'Generalized nepotism' of the book From Capital to Reason which develops a bit more the historical and social dimension of Lean.
Concerning the implementation of a Lean organization, consult the question 'What are the conditions to meet to produce a serious reasoning? Problem solving.'
Then see Chapter 9 'The problem journal' of the book From Capital to Reason which proposes a practical method.
Finally, tackle the book The Machine That Changed the World by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, Daniel Roos, and Donna Sammons Carpenter. A must-read to understand that our economic, social and commercial organization is not the only possible one, even within the capitalist system.

Regarding the information technology part, see 'What is colonization 2.0?'.