Reflections on the "Lean Manufacturing Practice Bundles", twenty years on..

In this chapter, the author reflects on her 2003 article, “Lean manufacturing: Context, practice bundles and performance,” which was published in the Journal of Operations Management. She considers the context within which the original article was written, with particular reference to theoretical and empirical problems salient at that time, and comments on the likely reasons the article has been influential, particularly in the lean operations domain, and in turn its influence on her thinking. Looking forward, she asks whether some of the issues, particularly definitional and measurement issues discussed in the earlier article still pose fundamental challenges. Changes such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the recent Covid experience are also likely to have profound implications for lean research and practice. The author proposes that to study the impact of these secular trends, we would be well served by going back to the roots of lean production.