This Paper was amongst top-10 winning entries in "Opsyrus 2005", the CoolAvenues.com - OIG (IIM Lucknow) Paper Writing Competition held in October 2005.

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Abstract

The New York Times has called Taichi Ohno of Toyota as, "The biggest crusader against waste in human history" and Peter Drucker called Toyota as "The industry of industries". Few would disagree with these statements. Ohno was the first to develop the principles and the
techniques of lean thinking which later spread to the rest of the automobile players and other industries throughout the world. The paper discusses and develops the prospects of lean techniques in various Indian industries. The Indian industry has been late in adapting to the lean production. However, the Indian automobile industry has adopted lean techniques and is relatively well-versed with them as compared to others. Steel, chemical and other process industries, which have low product variety, need to look at some aspects such as TPM and adjusting the production according to the demand in the market. Software development and services have been the recent entrants to look at the "lean thinking" but they stand to benefit, as there is large amount of waste present in these industries.

History of Lean Thinking

Lean thinking got its name from the path breaking book, "The Machine that Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production" by Womack, James P., Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos. The book describes the movement of the automobile industry from craft production to the mass production system developed by Henry Ford. In this system, Ford concentrated on standardization of automobile parts and assembly techniques, so that low-skilled workers and specialized equipment could make cars cheaper.

"Lean production, combines the advantages of craft and mass production, while avoiding the high cost of the former and the rigidity of the later."

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* Contributed by -
Aditya Aggarwal & Lalit Kumar Agarwalla,
NITIE, Mumbai.