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Jim Womack - Author

Jim Womack

Founder & Senior Advisor
Lean Enterprise Institute

James P. Womack is widely considered the founder of the lean movement. For many years he has spoken and published about creating value through continuous innovation based on deep customer insight. In the late 1980s, he and Dan Jones led MIT's International Motor Vehicle Research Program (IMVP), which introduced the term "lean" to describe Toyota's revolutionary management system.

Based on that research, Womack co-authored the following influential books:

He also founded the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) in 1997 as a nonprofit organization for research, education, publication and conferences. The goal was to make new knowledge about lean thinking and practices accessible worldwide for the benefit of individuals, organizations and society as a whole. Under his leadership, LEI grew to inspire the establishment of lean institutes in other countries. This culminated in the Lean Global Network in 2007.

Womack also wrote several influential articles, including:

  • From Lean Production to the Lean Enterprise(Harvard Business Review, March-April 1994),

  • Beyond Toyota: How to Root Out Waste and Pursue Perfection(Harvard Business Review, September-October 1996),

  • Lean Consumption(Harvard Business Review, March-April 2005).

Womack earned a PhD in political science from MIT in 1982 (with a dissertation on comparative industrial policy in the U.S., Germany and Japan), a master's degree in transportation systems from Harvard in 1975, and a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Chicago in 1970.

Books:
 Lean Thinking by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones Lean Solutions by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones Seeing the Whole Value Stream (expanded second edition) by Dan Jones and Jim Womack