Title: No instant prairie: planting lean to grow innovation

Authors: Fazleena Badurdeen, Phillip Marksberry, Arlie Hall, Bob Gregory

Addresses: Dept. of Mechanical Engineering and Center for Manufacturing, 210A CRMS Building, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, USA. ' Center for Manufacturing, 414L CRMS Building, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, USA. ' Center for Manufacturing, 414D CRMS Building, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, USA. ' Center for Manufacturing, 211 CRMS Building, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, USA

Abstract: Incremental innovation tends to be slighted in studies of innovation. We present the Toyota Production System (TPS) as an exemplary and valuable form of incremental innovation, point to the notorious difficulty other companies have in implementing lean manufacturing (as TPS has come to be known in the west) and then demonstrate that TPS, often misunderstood as stand-alone tools, is an integral part of an overall culture of innovation. To clarify how incremental innovation can be adopted, we propose an analogy for building the underlying culture and show TPS integrated in synergistic relationships with production processes and human resource management systems. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Keywords: Toyota Production System; TPS; lean manufacturing; incremental innovation; organisational culture; continuous improvement; production processes; human resource management; HRM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCENT.2009.026454

International Journal of Collaborative Enterprise, 2009 Vol.1 No.1, pp.22 - 38

Published online: 11 Jun 2009 *

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