Muda, Service and Flow Summary and Analysis

The chapter opens with an explanation of the role of Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System and proponent of the idea of industry without muda, or waste. His proposition is that "any human activity that absorbs resources but creates no value" is muda, and should be eliminated in industry and in life. Lean thinking, the antidote of muda, has four elements. They are the continuous flow of value by which quality continuously improves, production defined by the customer instead of by the producer, production only at the pull of the customer instead of batch and queue where capital is locked up in excess inventory, and production in search of perfection so that resources are used to their best efficiency. In the section on simplification and scale, the authors discuss moving production elements...