James P. Womack, Ph.D., is the founder and chairman of the Lean Enterprise Institute, a nonprofit training, publishing, conferencing, and management research organization chartered in August 1997, to advance a set of ideas known as lean production and lean management, based initially on the Toyota Production System.
I started writing a monthly e-letter in October 2001 to speak to the worries of the Lean Community as the world economy slid into recession. This month marks the end