Evolution of the Lean Enterprise System: A Critical Synthesis and Agenda for the Future

Abstract

Many aerospace enterprises and other organizations have adopted a variety of management approaches to
\nachieve continuous process improvement, enterprise change and transformation, such as the lean enterprise system,
\ntotal quality management (TQM), theory of constraints (TOC), agile manufacturing, and business process reengineering
\n(BPR). Among them, the lean enterprise system, with its origins in the Toyota Production System (TPS),
\ncomes closest to providing a holistic view of enterprises as complex socio-technical systems embodying a mutually
\nsupportive set of precepts and practices driving enterprise operations at all levels (i.e., strategic, tactical, operational)
\nand throughout the enterprise value stream encompassing both upstream supplier networks and downstream customerfocused
\nactivities. Lean enterprise principles and practices have evolved over many decades through a process of
\nexperimentation, learning and adaptation. A distinction is made between the basic lean enterprise system (BLES),
\ncapturing salient developments over the period between the late 1940s and mid-1990s, and the contemporary lean
\nenterprise system (CLES), capturing major conceptual and implementation-related extensions of the basic model since
\nthe mid-1990s. The lean enterprise system, as a viable framework for explaining the structure and dynamics of modern
\nnetworked enterprises, for managing them, and for improving their performance through either continuous process
\nimprovement or planned systemic change and transformation, remains a work-in-progress.