- the continual effort to increase productivity and eliminate waste.
"Lean" Production was the term chosen by Womack to label the concepts of Toyota's production system ["we were beginning to understand our subject but didn't have a label for the concept. We thought about Toyota-ism (after the car company) or Toyoda-ism after Kiichiro Toyoda, the company president who had many of the ideas for pull systems in the 1930s, or Ohno-ism after Taiichi Ohno" - from Lean Thinking: A Look Back And A Look Forward by Jim Womack].
- Lean Thinking Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones (Contributor), 1996, 2003.
- The Machine That Changed the World The Story of Lean Production by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones (Contributor) and Daniel Roos (Contributor), 1991. Based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's five year study on the future of the worldwide auto industry.