Varia Ranah - Sorotan Ilmiah Perkhidmatan Awam

454 Varia Ranah: Sorotan Ilmiah Perkhidmatan Awam Toussaint and Berry (2013) are of the opinion that lean is a kind of “change process” happens in an organisation that brings the new way of doing works. Having all these definitions, it shows that there is no absolute description of lean as it has evolved over an extended period of time (Womack et al., 1990; Spear and Bowen, 1999; Hopp and Spearman, 2004). The term lean is also used interchangeably with other quality-related approaches such as Just-in- time (JIT), Continuous Improvement (CI), Total Quality Management (TQM), World Class Manufacturing, Theory of Constraints (TOC) and Six Sigma. The absence of discrepancy between the mechanism and its system contributes to the equivocalness in characterizing lean; and subsequently many see lean as nothing more than a toolkit and this resulted to mislay the judicious thinking behind it. The Brief History of Lean Back to the earlier days of modern manufacturing by automobile companies will bring us to the history of lean. Between 1908 and 1927, Ford Motors Company produced over 15 million Model T cars. At that time, this would not be possible without an integrated system. It was all started when Henry Ford successfully integrate ‘mass-production’ system that enabled them to produce huge volumes of products. Ford created what is now known as flow production. This integrated mass-production system assisted Ford to fabricate and assemble the vehicles parts within minutes as compared to hours or days before. The mass-production system has allowed Ford to deliver perfectly fitted compatible components. The mass production system was then adopted by the US military during World War II. In 1926, Japan has marked the birth of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works (which later known as Toyota). Sakichi Toyoda was the person behind the establishment of this company. They changed its name once they started producing automobiles. To learn from the other automobile company, the nephew of Sakichi Toyoda; Eiji Toyoda took part in a short-term visit to the