Jenei István

István Jenei: Lean transformation of hospital processes – Structuring foreign and Hungarian experiences,
PhD Dissertation, Corvinus University of Budapest, Doctoral School in Business Administration
1983, the author was present at a special forum organised with the participation of many
theoretical and practical experts interested in the topic. One of the significant
achievements of the forum was that it provided a valid definition of the interrelationship
of TQC (later on TQM) and JIT/lean, viz. that "they were mutually supportive co-
equals” (Schonberger, 2007. p.408.).
Essentially the same position is shared by Dahlgaard – Dahlgaard (2006), who
emphasise that lean management supports the general theses of TQM. Shimokava and
Fujimoto (2009), on the other hand, speak of the role played by TQM within the Toyota
Production System.
In what follows, I shall use the results of two research projects to specify the
relationship of the two systems, which I shall compare with the findings of the Shah-
Ward (2007) research described in Section 1.3.
The first research, the findings of which I shall represent considers the
relationship of TQM and lean in two dimensions, production practices and performance
(Flynn et al., 1995). The article defines the typical practices of each of the two systems
and examines their respective and combined performances. What is important for our
purposes here is the practices associated with the systems. Flynn, Sakakibara and
Schroeder identified three classes of practice: JIT-specific practice, TQM-specific
practice and so-called “infrastructural” practice, which essentially means the
intersection of TQM and JIT practice. The attribute “infrastructural” was inspired by the
common features of the practices concerned: according to the authors they represent the
basis of both systems. The classification of the various practices by Flynn et al. (1995)
is shown in the second column of Table 1.
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