UK Lean Systems Featured in Business Excellence

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 8, 2012) — The University of Kentucky Lean Systems Program was recently featured in Business Excellence magazine.

The magazine describes the program as "perhaps the closest you can come to understanding lean as Toyota sees it."

Click here to view the article.

Based in the UK College of Engineering, the lean program was developed as a university-industry partnership initiated by Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky in 1994. The intent of this partnership was to explore, study and teach the workings of Toyota's production system (TPS), also known as "lean systems." The overall concept of a lean system is to increase operational efficiency through systematic waste elimination. Introduced in the early '90s, this "train the trainer" program has become known worldwide, and UK's lean program has helped more than 2,000 companies nationally and internationally.

To learn the basics of true lean, UK offers a certification series which teaches students step by step how to facilitate a true lean implementation across any business process. Although originally focused on manufacturing, it has become apparent that lean principles can be applied to many other enterprises as well, such as the health care, service and food industries.