Lean Manufacturing Insignia Unisex T-shirt

NOT AVAILABLE IN STORES

Our LEAN MANUFACTURING insignia has an old-school feel. It’s a great gift for lean practitioners, industrial engineers, process improvement experts, and six sigma black belts. Frontline factory employees will love it too.  

Offered in four muted color combinations. Even the black has a slight heather to it. The burnt orange looks great on people with blue eyes. Trust us. 

#IYKYK. If you don't know...

Lean manufacturing doesn’t have a precise date of establishment, but the term “lean manufacturing” does. 

Toyota doesn’t call their system “lean.” They call it the Toyota Production System, aka TPS, aka business as usual, and it’s ever evolving. If you visit a Toyota plant this year and again in four years, you’ll essentially be visiting a different place. 

However, the pillars of TPS remain the same: Respect for people and continuous improvement.

For the process improvement purists, “REFINED PROCESS” works better for the design than the rather clunky “continuous process improvement.” So there. 

Also of note, “lean manufacturing” was not coined by Womack and Jones, the authors of the most famous book on the subject, Lean Thinking. The term’s first use is attributed to James Womack’s graduate student, John Krafcik. The years was 1988, hence the year in our insignia. 

Krafcik went on to head up Google’s self-driving car project. Wowza. (The company is called Waymo. Wowza is my reaction.)

Krafcik got his professional start at a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors, known as NUMMI. He was, unsurprisingly, a quality and manufacturing engineer. From there he went to MIT and worked under David Womack. 

To get crisply precise in our trivia, “Lean production” predates “lean manufacturing” (po-tae-to, po-tah-to). Krafcik published, “Triumph of the Lean Production System,” in a 1988 edition of MIT Sloan Management Review. He contrasted lean systems from “buffered systems,” that rely on mountains of inventory. 

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Offered exclusively to QI Curiosities customers.

Here at Quality Improvement Curiosities, buying in small batches pays! Get an escalating discount when you buy multiple shirts in any combination. Buy 3-4 and get 15% off. Buy 5 and get 20% off. Buy 6+ and get 25% off.

Our comfy t-shirts are soft and lightweight with the right amount of stretch.

• 100% combed and ring-spun cotton (Heather colors contain polyester)
• Fabric weight: 4.2 oz./yd.² (142 g/m²)
• Pre-shrunk fabric
• Side-seamed construction
• Shoulder-to-shoulder taping
• Blank product sourced from Nicaragua, Mexico, Honduras, or the US

This product is made especially for you as soon as you place an order, which is why it takes us a bit longer to deliver it to you. Making products on demand instead of in bulk helps reduce overproduction, so thank you for making thoughtful purchasing decisions!

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