Nearly 30 years after the start of the lean movement, there is widespread agreement that things have not gone according to plan. Of course, there have been some notable successes (particularly from those who worked with Shingijutsu), yet they are far fewer in number than anyone expected, given the wide-ranging benefits of lean management to all stakeholders.

This is not criticism resulting from hindsight—far from it. What happened could be seen and understood in real time or after short delays of one to three years. These are the miscalculations that I observed:

• The strength to which people are attracted to tools to improve their existing management practices, and conversely, the near-total lack of interest in a completely new system of management. Thus, lean tools that are peripheral to core industrial engineering methods used in kaizen became very popular. This includes 5S, visual controls, value stream maps, A3 reports, and gemba walks.

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