“Although there are instances of rigorous process thinking in manufacturing all the way back to the Arsenal in Venice in the 1450s, the first person to truly integrate an entire production process was Henry Ford. At Highland Park, MI, in 1913 he married consistently interchangeable parts with standard work and moving conveyance to create what he called flow production. The public grasped this in the dramatic form of the moving assembly line, but from the standpoint of the manufacturing engineer the breakthroughs went much further.”
The True Origin of LEAN begins with Henry Ford with respect to flow production and leveraging the knowledge of those doing the work.
LEAN did NOT originate in JAPAN or with TPS.
Forget, 5S, Gemba, Jidoka, Kaizen, Kanban, Muda, Poka-Yoke, PCDA, Takt time, Value Stream Mapping,
The core principles of LEAN originated with Henry Ford.
Ford lined up fabrication steps in process sequence wherever possible using special-purpose machines and go/no-go gauges to fabricate and assemble the components going into the vehicle within a few minutes and deliver perfectly fitting components directly to line-side. This was a truly revolutionary break from the shop practices of the American System that consisted of general-purpose machines grouped by process, which made parts that eventually found their way into finished products after a good bit of tinkering (fitting) in subassembly and final assembly. (Source: LEAN Enterprise Institute (https://www.lean.org/explore-lean/a-brief-history-of-lean/)Lean Construction solutions are now readily available.