If you’ve studied Lean for a while, you may have seen the abbreviation “TPS.” It usually means “Toyota Production System.” Toyota created the business culture we now call “Lean” in the 1950s and 60s. They simply named it the Toyota Production System. The label “Lean” was first used in the 1980s by American business researchers.

Check out this quote from one of Toyota’s key experts:

“We at Toyota made a mistake. We should never have called it the Toyota Production System. We should have called it the Thinking Production System, because the real point of everything is to make people think.”

Many companies hire workers mainly to use their hands. This ignores the fact that every human being has the ability to think and have ideas. The essence of Lean is to use the mental and creative abilities of EVERYONE to continuously improve the work system. Workers still use their hands, of course. But the goal is to get everyone ALSO using their minds.

“People don’t go to Toyota to ‘work’; they go there to ‘think.'” 

I plan to focus the next set of blog posts on the topic of “Lean Thinking.”

Notes:

The first quote is from Developing Lean Leaders at all Levels by Jeffrey K. Liker with George Trachilis (Lean Leadership Institute, 2014) p. 17.

The second quote from Taiichi Ohno is taken from The Lean Farm by Ben Hartman (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015) p. 139.