Why allow this? Other manufacturers shuddered at the idea – stopping production meant that quotas for the day were likely to be missed, tense meetings were to be had, and more importantly, money wasn’t being made. They each had the power to halt the entire manufacturing process. Something that made Toyota so unique from other car makers was the ability for any employee involved in the manufacture of cars to stop production immediately.

All these, among others, contribute to keeping costs low and quality high.īut what about lean in the non-manufacturing environment? Can the ideas of Lean Manufacturing translate to the office? Does it apply as much to the cubicle as to the shop floor? I propose that they can – and instead of drilling into each and every principle of Lean Manufacturing and trying to map them to the white collar workplace (have to save some content for other articles, after all), I’d like the focus on one: the Big Red Button. Some of the core ideas of lean manufacturing accomplish this quite well: Raw materials ordered on a pull system, Kanban cards directing inventory replenishment, and standardized processes for work station setup and upkeep. At the core of it, Lean’s goal is to reduce waste – or muda, as the Japanese call it. Since the study of the Toyota Production System launched the Lean Manufacturing revolution, “Lean” has become perhaps one of the most overused corporate buzzwords of our time – and for good reason.

Big red button company