Beyond lean: an essay (mass production)

Abstract

The authors take issue with the belief that traditional mass production has been superseded by a single new kind of 'lean' organization invented in Japan and now diffusing throughout the advanced countries. They maintain that national differences in corporate strategy and organization will necessarily extend right through production. They look at the ways in which US and European firms are reorganizing to change over from traditional mass production to lean approaches and identify trends that differ from what Japanese firms have done.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>