Assignment: Context = the Toyota Production System (TPS) - LEAN (see TPS video posted in week 4) a) In 1990 a book was published based on a MIT 5-year study of the future of the automobile: "The machine that changed the world" - Womach, Jones, Roos. (Rawson Associates Scribner, Simon & Schuster). From the book's dust cover notes: Twice in the 20th Century the auto industry has changed our most fundamental ideas about how to do things. Now it is doing it again. Just as mass production swept away craft production, so a new way of making things, called Lean production, is now rapidly makingmass production obsolete. b) Course text: Heizer, Render & Griffin - 3rd Canadian Edition (p619): "Lean production can be thought of as the end result of a well-run OM function...but lean production begins externally with a focus on the customer" c) Then in 2018 Industry Week commented on how the Toyota Production System is impacting new developments in business including electric cars as well as other products: https://www.industryweek.com/operations/toyotas-way-changed-worlds-factories-now-retod Four Questions: Answer in the text of your report...... 1) What are the key premises of the Toyota Production "Lean" system (TPS) in both manufacturing and service organizations (Chap 16)? 2) Which of the fundamental 10 OM decisions discussed in this course (described in Chap 1) does TPS impact? How? 3) What, if anything has changed since the Womach/Jones 1990 book was written? Is Lean still important today? 4) How does Lean thinking help businesses survive COVID-19 and rebuild after the pandemic? (illustrate using either a manufacturing or service business case) Submission of assignment: One group member to send by Bb through Course Message. Paper due: April 19 Report back to class (April 5)