this management and manufacturing process focuses on
the following important concepts:
Elimination of waste: If something doesn’t add value to the final
product, get rid of it. There is no room for wasted work.
Just-in-time: Don’t build something until the customer is ready to
buy it. Excess inventory wastes resources.
Continuous improvement (Kizan): Always improve your
processes with lessons learned and communication.While these concepts seem glaringly obvious and
practical, TPS was the first implementation of these
principles as a management philosophy. TPS was the
start of the more generalized Lean manufacturing
approach that was introduced to the Western world in
1991 through a book written by Womack, Jones, and
Roos, The Machine That Changed the World. This book
was based on a five-year study MIT conducted on TPS,
and it has been credited with bringing Lean concepts and
processes beyond the auto industry.
Why spend this time talking about moldy old
management books? Lean led to Agile software
development, which has served as a lightning rod of
change for IT operations.
Agile
Agile is an application of Lean principles to software
development. With Agile, all the lessons learned in
optimizing manufacturing processes have been applied
to the discipline of creating software. In 2001, 17
software developers converged on the Snowbird resort in
Utah to discuss new lightweight development methods.
Tired of missing deadlines, endless documentation, and
the inflexibility of existing software development
practices, these Agile pioneers created the “Manifesto for
Agile Software Development,” which codifies the guiding