Has the “short supply chain” movement has caught on?

Question/Comment: I was wondering if the “short supply chain” movement is also a movement into lean production techniques. I know that several companies (e.g., Toyota) have done it for years, but I was interested to know whether it has caught on.

Paul Solman: Lean production has indeed caught on. But in a sense, it caught on a long time ago. In fact, you could say lean production is the whole story behind the Industrial Revolution: making more with less. Every technological improvement (or productivity advance) in manufacturing is then an instance of lean production, from Henry Ford’s Model T assembly line to the “continuous improvement” movement made famous by the Japanese in the ’80s.

To the extent a short supply chain helps make more with less, it’s an aspect of productivity progress. In today’s terminology, that means “lean production.”