Rethinking for Radical Improvement in the Delivery of Housing Services: An Overview of the Application of Systems Thinking in the Housing Sector

In 1990, a book called The Machine That Changed the World shook the automotive industry by showing how far ahead certain Japanese car makers were in manufacturing, design, and supply chain capability using lean production techniques pioneered by Toyota over the last 50 years. The term lean was initially used then to coin or describe Toyota’s Production System (TPS), more recently it is used to describe Toyota’s entire management system. However, since that publication the sphere of influence of lean has been vast and ubiquitous. Originating in automotive manufacturing, lean has spread into general manufacturing, into the service sectors such as retailing and, more recently, into public and third sector organisations. Moreover, many have argued that the term lean is highly inappropriate for describing the depth of approaches deployed in Toyota. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.