Lean Management

The continuous improvement of operating processes is the focus of this Japanese management method. The basic approaches were developed by Toyota in the middle of the 20th century. When it was introduced, the automaker aimed to reduce superfluous activities and excess material use in production in order to best satisfy customer needs at the lowest possible cost.
Activities that consume resources such as labor, space, or machinery but do not contribute to value creation are considered waste and should be reduced as much as possible or, if possible, stopped altogether. The term waste (Japanese: muda) is a key concept in lean management. In order to permanently reduce it, a steady flow of production, standardization of processes, reduction of inventories to the absolute minimum and a strong customer focus ("only what the customer wants is produced") are strived for in order to ultimately achieve a very high level of flexibility.