Development of lean thinking
Originally, lean was developed as a production philosophy
and quality system, with elements of both craft production
and mass production. Lean thinking, with its emphasis on
standardization, tries to eliminate inventory and improve processes.
Time between a customer requesting a service andthen receiving it is minimized. Various tools that together
came to be known as lean production were first pioneered at
the Toyota Corporation and were later used in the automotive,
manufacturing and service industry and eventually
health care (for an overview see reference [8]).