Lean maintenance was first distinguished as a unique program by observers of the Toyota Production System (TPS) in the early 1980s. The phrase Lean Manufacturing was never used by Toyota but was coined by James Womack in his ground-breaking 1990 book titled The Machine That Changed the World.

TPS concepts include: waste elimination (Lean Manufacturing), standardized work practices, just-in-time manufacturing scheduling, and a focus on quality. Shigeo Shingo is generally credited with originating lean manufacturing as part of TPS. He was a brilliant observer of manufacturing processes, and could see the waste in almost every process. Lean was named from that time, but the philosophy has been around for hundreds or even thousands of years.

Womack and Jones in their 2005 book Lean Solutions defined lean thinking. The two men were discussing manufacturing a product, but the conclusion completely applies to maintenance. It is said that the process should provide for something actually desired by the customer in other words, a product that the customer wants or needs. In our business, the products are the services that repair breakdowns, efforts that provide reliability and uptime, and anything we do to assure consistent quality output.

In an interview, Geoff Green, an expert and facilitator of Lean manufacturing practices for SIRF Round Table in Australia, and Joanne Law, marketing head of the Lean Roundtable, described some of the history and attitudes important in Lean approaches. First Geoff explained that Lean came from automobile assembly plants where machines...