Lean manufacturing's main keys are the following:

Perfect first-time quality - quest for zero defects, revealing and solving problems at the source

Waste minimization - eliminating all non value-adding activities and safety nets, maximization of scarce resources (capital, people and space)

Continuous improvement - reducing costs, improving quality, increasing productivity and information sharing, pull processing: products are pulled from the consumer end, not pushed from the production end

Flexibility - producing different mixes or greater diversity of products quickly, without sacrificing efficiency at lower volumes of production, building and maintaining a long term relationship with suppliers through collaborative risk sharing, cost sharing and information sharing arrangements. The world’s economy today is always changing and more competitive than ever. There are new companies created everyday and old ones tightening their grip on their thrifty empires. For any of these companies to remain successful or become successful, they must find a way to stay on top of their game and please the customer better than ever before. Increasingly, successful companies are turning to lean business practices (lean manufacturing, lean customer service, lean office, lean distribution, lean public sector) as the answer to staying on top of their industry. Lean 5S is not necessarily a particular way of producing a product. It is instead a philosophical way of thinking.

McDonald's can be said to have recently implemented a lean technique. McDonald's no longer makes an abundance of food to wait in holding bins in anticipation of a meal time rush. If a rush does not happen, then there is an obvious waste of food as well as labor. Instead, McDonald's has focused on making the food when the customer orders to provide a fresher and hotter meal. A focus on consistent labor training and improvement is the key to keeping this service speedy and reliable. By implementing this new "leaner" way of thinking, waste of food and labor has been minimized, which is the main goal of the lean process.

Lean manufacturing was actually born in 1914 with Henry Ford and the mass production moving assembly line. Lean relies on keeping a steady flow of product out the door to the customer. Ford's system did exactly that, though it was missing some of the most important and common factors in today's lean philosophy. The original Ford assembly line was putting out thousands of Model T cars at a vast rate. The problem was that it did not matter what the customer demand or requests were; there was a base black Model T available. They didn't worry about customer satisfaction or demand whatsoever. The Ford motor company stuck with mass production and had a large stock of inventory (waste) just sitting around. Although Toyota is credited with beginning Lean Production with their Toyota Production System, the roots of "lean" date back as far as the 16th century. In 1570, King Henry III of France watched in amazement as the Venice Arsenal built galley ships in less than an hour using the continuous flow process.

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