Lean Management et excellence industrielle

The post-war boom years, dubbed the "Trente Glorieuses" by Jean Fourastié, led our manufacturers to develop, experiment with and validate a number of management rules perfectly suited to this context. These rules were subsequently incorporated into the ERP software packages that now equip the majority of our companies.

Today, however, the situation has changed radically: demand is lower than supply, which has become globalized, products have extremely short life cycles, and customers are increasingly demanding in terms of price, personalization and associated services. Against this backdrop, these productivist rules are no longer delivering the results to which we have become accustomed, and manufacturers, somewhat disoriented, are turning to new approaches.

Among these, Lean Management is a highly relevant response to the new economic trend, as it focuses more on the company's responsiveness.

This approach originated in the Toyota Production System developed by the Japanese carmaker in the early 1970s, under the impetus of engineers Taïchi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo. It was then repackaged by two American researchers from MIT (Massachussetts Institute of Technology): James Womack and Daniel Jones, and it was in this form that Lean Management made its appearance in France and Europe in the mid-1990s.

We can, however, deplore the fact that, over time, the original TPS has been somewhat stripped of one of its fundamental pillars: the human element. The other problem lies in the need to question a number of presuppositions, decision-making mechanisms and indicators inherited from the Thirty Glorious Years, which many manufacturers find extremely difficult to grasp and operate.