A Journey of Discovery: TWI and the Origins of Lean

In late winter of 1989 Alan Robinson and I were working on an article dealing with the power of front-line ideas. Alan had recently returned from Japan where he had been given exceptional access to a number of Japanese manufacturers, and had been able to study their processes in depth. His research had convinced him that part of the key to the manufacturing efficiency of these leading Japanese companies was in the large number of ideas they were getting from their front-line employees. At the...