Operations, Quality and Lean Production

Output is limited by one constraint at a time, and inventory piled between steps hides both the constraint and the defects, so improvement means locating the bottleneck, exposing problems where they occur, and cutting batch sizes until they surface quickly. Ohno describes the Toyota system in his own terms, with pull scheduling, kanban, jidoka and the authority of any worker to stop the line, and Womack, Jones and Roos measured the productivity and quality gap between Japanese and Western car plants across the industry. Deming argues against inspection and numerical quotas and for reducing variation, which is where statistical process control entered management practice. Goldratt teaches the theory of constraints twice, once as a factory novel and once as method, and Kim's Phoenix Project applies the same reasoning to software delivery and IT operations.

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