At the foundation of the house is stability. Ironically, the requirement for working with little inventory and stopping production when there is a problem causes instability and a sense of urgency among workers. In mass production, when a machine goes down, there is no sense of urgency: the maintenance department is scheduled to fix it while inventory keeps the operations running. By contrast, in lean production, when an operator shuts down equipment to fix a problem, other operations will soon stop producing, creating a crisis. So there is always a sense of urgency for everyone in production
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