LEAN PRODUCTION: MERELY AN APPLICATION OF THE LEARNING CURVE?

Lean production has been propagated as a philosophy, as a set of practices and as a set of methods and tools. Whereas many efforts are still undertaken to assess its applicability to other domains, such as healthcare, and to include more factors, for example, sustainability, less attention has been paid to examining its tenets from a theoretical perspective. In that perspective, the theory of the learning curve serves as Occams razor for the concept of lean production. Moreover, the underlying principles of learning curves are more fecund than lean production. The case study, not using the principles of lean thinking, demonstrates the wider applicability of the learning curves. Henceforth, this paper urges academics in operations management to better explore the foundations of lean production before heralding its doctrine.