Today I’m looking at Factory Physics and the Toyota Production System (TPS). My main references for the post are the 1977 paper co-authored by ex-Toyota president Fujio Cho and key ideas from Factory Physics (Waveland Press, 2011).

One of my favorite definitions of lean comes from Wallace J. Hopp and Mark L. Spearman, who wrote Factory Physics. They defined lean as follows: “Lean is fundamentally about minimizing the cost of buffering variability.... Production of goods or services is lean if it is accomplished with minimal buffering costs.”

 …