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Reflecting On Machine That Changed The World - 35 Years Later

The Machine That Changed the World remains, 35 years later, the most comprehensive and empirically grounded explanation of Toyota as a complete enterprise system—not a collection of factory tools. Built on unmatched MIT research, the book quantified a structural performance gap between lean and mass production across product development, manufacturing, supply chains, and management, launching the Lean movement and defining its core vocabulary. Despite decades of Lean activity since, no later work has equaled its enterprise-wide scope, comparative rigor, or lasting explanatory power

Art Smalley•January 16, 2026

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problem-solvingleadership-management

The Coffee House Delusion - Why "Liquid Networks" Are Overrated

For years we’ve been told innovation comes from “creative collisions” — open offices, hallway chats, coffeehouse serendipity. But the evidence suggests that’s mostly a myth. Real breakthroughs are usually born in deep solitude, refined through structured review, and only then spread through networks.

Jan 2, 2026Read more →

leantoyota

Which Supermarket: Reviewing the Origins of Toyota's Pull System

An amusing internet tale about Toyota often goes something like this: the company’s legendary pull system sprang from Taiichi Ohno's epiphany during a visit to a Memphis-based supermarket chain called Piggly Wiggly. According to the legend, Ohno visited the store during a 1956 U.S. visit and was amazed by the way shelves were instantly refilled as customers shopped. And the thus the concept for his replenishment “supermarket” style of production was born. Despite the fact that no one can seem to locate a primary source for this story, it has been widely repeated for decades on internet blogs, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, and even by major news outlets like Reuters.

Dec 30, 2025Read more →

leantoyota

Toyota Product Development History

Toyota Motor Corporation is often described through the lens of manufacturing, especially the Toyota Production System (TPS). But Toyota’s long-run performance also depends on a set of less-visible, tightly linked systems: product development, production engineering, quality, marketing, finance, and various other critical management systems. This article provides a structured history of Toyota’s product development engineering organization, tracing its evolution from a small automotive group inside a loom manufacturer in the 1930s to today’s mobility-era development structures. Future articles will examine the early loom business, the parallel evolution of production engineering and other disciplines.

Dec 15, 2025Read more →

leadership-management

Leading Transformation in the Age of Lean Ai

Exploring how leaders can combine Lean thinking with today's narrow AI tools through five practical levels of collaboration—from basic chat to agentic systems—while keeping humans at the center.

Nov 14, 2025Read more →

leanai

Humans Are End-to-End, LLMs Are Middle-to-Middle

Humans perceive and verify end-to-end, while LLMs reason middle-to-middle. How combining both creates a powerful two-layer PDCA loop for learning together.

Nov 4, 2025Read more →

leanai

Lean AI: Navigating Hype and Reality in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

The signals surrounding AI couldn't be more confusing — warnings of massive unemployment, glitzy robot demos, yet quiet transformation happening in software and consulting. The key lies in understanding Big AI versus Narrow AI, and partnering AI with lean rather than treating it as an all-encompassing solution.

Oct 31, 2025Read more →

aitechnology

Technology x Behavior x Management = Impact: Lessons from 30 Years of Lean for the Age of AI

Drawing from 30 years of Lean implementation, this framework shows why successful AI adoption requires three elements working together: Technology, Behavior, and Management systems. When any element is zero, impact is zero. Learn how to multiply results instead of adding them.

Oct 31, 2025Read more →

leanproblem-solving

The Missing Link - Production Engineering in Toyota

Most Lean stories focus on the assembly line—kanban, standardized work, 5S—but overlook Toyota’s hidden engine of excellence: Production Engineering. Beneath the visible face of the Toyota Production System lay a decades-long effort to raise process capability through deep engineering kaizen—redesigning chucks, spindles, bearings, and fixtures. While consultants documented the daily management tools (Track 3) and researchers studied product development (Track 1), the middle layer—Track 2 Production Engineering (Seisan Gijutsu)—remained invisible. This “missing link” explains how Toyota moved from 5 % scrap rates to 0.05 % while holding micron-level precision. The story reminds us that Lean is not just about managing work—it’s about engineering process capability that others can’t see.

Oct 26, 2025Read more →

5 Levels of AI Proficiency and Collaboration

After spending some time building various coaching tools with AI, I began to see clear patterns in how people collaborate with large language models. The result is a five-level framework for AI proficiency — from casual chat use to full system integration. It explains why some users create breakthrough results while others see only hype, and how Lean thinking can guide us toward smarter human-AI collaboration.

Oct 26, 2025Read more →

leanai

Tokens vs Torque: 4 Types of Situation

Tokens vs Torque: 4 Types of Situations and how Ai can augment our abilities.

Oct 26, 2025Read more →

aiproblem-solving

From Skeptic to Believer - My AI Learning Journey

How I went from a full blown skeptic to a believer in the positive use cases of Ai in conjunction with topics like problem solving and Lean Thinking

Aug 14, 2025Read more →