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When Toyota set its sight on manufacturing cars for Japan, it could not afford the enormous investment in single purpose machines that seemed to be required. Nor could it afford the inventory or large amount of indirect labor that seemed necessary for mass production. So, it
invented a better way to do things using very low inventory and moving decision-making to production workers.

Muda is the Japanese word for waste, which consumes resource but creates no value. No one wants production of defective parts, movement of employees and transportation of goods from one place to another without any purpose.

The antidote for muda is lean thinking, which provides a way to specify value, line up the value creating actions in the best sequence, conduct these activities without interruption whenever someone requests them, and perform them more and more effectively. In short, lean thinking is lean because it provides a way to do more and more with less and less human effort, less equipment, less time and less space while coming closer and closer to what customers actually want. It also provides a way to make work more satisfying by providing immediate feedback on efforts to convert muda into value.

Lean Production in India: An overview

Lean production techniques had spread from Japan to the rest of the world. In India also, the spread has been due to collaboration of Japanese companies with players in the Indian market. Maruti Udyog Limited was the first company to implement lean production into place in the country. In the year 1980, when the government of India decided to go into a JV with Suzuki, it was the country's first brush with lean production.

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