Abstract
Lean Manufacturing arose from the Toyota Production System. The variants of Lean Manufacturing, such as TQM, were originally founded in the Japanese automotive industry, buttheir evolution was mostly carried out in the West. The aim of this paper is to produce a comparative study between Total Quality Management and Lean Manufacturing with an emphasis on the Lean Thinking approach. The paper systematically categorizes the related literature of various studies, analyzes the literature and finally reviews it methodologically. The results of this research reveal that Total Quality Management and Lean Manufacturing have much in common. Based on Lean strategies, Total Quality Management, similar to numerous improvement approaches, can be a tool to support and create synergy for inducing a more competitive market among companies.
