Lean Production: The Original Myth Reconsidered

This chapter commences with a reassessment of the data which originally emboldened leading figures in an MIT-headquartered car assembly plant productivity survey, conducted in the late 1980s, to declare that definitive evidence had been collated to show conclusive organisational advantages in production centred in Japan, which for successfully emulating firms abroad would dramatically lower the hours of assembly plant labour required to make cars at any level of factory automation. ‘Lean production’ — a Western made term — was invented and promoted in this connection, giving rise to an enormous subsequent literature, both prescriptive and critical. The practices of one car producer in particular, Toyota, were identified as the key to success by the apostles of lean production — the reference point for lean thinking. An alternative interpretive reading of the original survey data is first advanced, pointing to quite different conclusions which could have been drawn had the survey authors been more open to other possibilities, and which helps explain why the radical worldwide lift in production potentials predicted by lean thinkers has not transpired. We next consider the relevance of our interpretive reading for the understanding of labour process issues, noting a striking anomaly in the Japanese variety of industrial capitalism when compared with the West.