The term Lean was first used by our founders Jim Womack and Dan Jones in the late 1980s, in their research on the automotive industry conducted out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), published in the book "The Machine That Changed the World."

This study showed that Toyota had superior competitiveness and that this could be explained by their specific way of conducting business. Toyota developed the Lean methodology based on the Toyota Business System. They combined ideas that had long lived within Toyota (such as Jidoka and Just-in-Time JIT) with ideas developed by other pioneers (such as the Plan, Do, Check, Act/adjust PDCA cycle, standardization and the Training Within Industry (TWI) program.

The 5 Lean principles may have their roots in Toyota's factories in Japan, but today the Lean method has become an alternative, superior approach to work - no matter what the work is (manufacturing, office), the industry or the size of the organization.

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