Lean Manufacturing: What is Lean and the Toyota Production System? 

Thanks! I think there is some truth in your comment. There had been an overemphasis on tools in the early days of Lean (the '90s). However, it is untrue to state that "Toyota has no written tools." Ohno invented several tools including kanban for example. Where would Toyota have been in the early days without SMED? The problem isn't the tools per se. Tools are fine, but using tools is not going to create the kind of culture change you need to be successful. How do you create an environment where people can solve problems and make improvements to their work? How do you create a "kaizen" mindset? How do we create an army of problem solvers in an organization? This is the kind of thing that we emphasize in our training, but don't be too quick to dismiss the tools, because tools are sometimes needed as countermeasures when appropropriate. A couple of other points- 1. "Team based activities for Kaizen- Ohno would turn in his grave." I can't say what Ohno would or wouldn't do; however, I can tell you that as recently as 5 years ago, Toyota's distribution center here in California was holding team kaizen events- not as their primary means of improvement, but as a means of learning. 2. "LEAN was never used by Ohno." Of course not, "Lean production" was a term originally used to describe TPS.