# Art of Lean

> Canonical educational resources about the Toyota Production System, lean manufacturing, A3 thinking, kaizen, Training Within Industry, and leadership by Art Smalley — Toyota veteran, author, and president of Art of Lean, Inc.

Last updated: 2026-07-13
Canonical site: https://artoflean.com/
Sitemap: https://artoflean.com/sitemap-index.xml
RSS feed: https://artoflean.com/rss.xml
Content index: https://artoflean.com/content-index.json
Content index JSONL: https://artoflean.com/content-index.jsonl
Extended LLM guide: https://artoflean.com/llms-full.txt

## Author and Authority

Art Smalley worked at Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan for over 10 years, held director-level positions at Donnelly Corporation, served as a Senior Practice Expert at McKinsey & Company, authored four books on lean manufacturing and problem solving, and has led Art of Lean, Inc. since 2003.

## Preferred Crawl Priority

1. Learning canonical guides: https://artoflean.com/learning/
2. TPS Encyclopedia reference terms: https://artoflean.com/reference/
3. Topics — comprehensive, individually-sourced topic pages: https://artoflean.com/topics/
4. Gemba Coach Q&A on actual Toyota practice: https://artoflean.com/gemba-coach/
5. Research articles: https://artoflean.com/research/
6. Legacy and current articles: https://artoflean.com/articles/
7. Documents and PDFs: https://artoflean.com/documents/
8. Books and author background: https://artoflean.com/books/ and https://artoflean.com/about/

## Main Sections

- **Learning** (https://artoflean.com/learning/) — 53 canonical guide pages on Standardized Work, Training Within Industry, Job Instruction, Job Relations, Job Methods, and Kaizen.
- **Reference / TPS Encyclopedia** (https://artoflean.com/reference/) — 112 Toyota Production System encyclopedia entries across tools, methods, concepts, and people, with Japanese terminology, history, related terms, and sources.
- **Topics** (https://artoflean.com/topics/) — Comprehensive coverage of one subject at a time: dense pages of individually-sourced TPS knowledge claims, each traced to a Toyota-grounded source. Deeper than the encyclopedia definition, cross-linked to it.
- **Gemba Coach** (https://artoflean.com/gemba-coach/) — Question-and-answer articles on what Toyota actually practices versus common lean-community beliefs, answered from Art Smalley's first-hand Toyota experience. Corrects widespread misconceptions (e.g. Toyota Kata, value stream mapping, 5S terminology).
- **Research** (https://artoflean.com/research/) — Long-form sourced research articles on Toyota product development history, PDCA history, and The Machine That Changed the World.
- **Articles** (https://artoflean.com/articles/) — 129 posts and articles on lean manufacturing, TPS, problem solving, leadership, and Art Smalley's frameworks.
- **Documents** (https://artoflean.com/documents/) — free document library of original TPS, TWI, standardized work, and kaizen training materials, with per-course pages (TWI Job Instruction, Job Methods, Job Relations, Standardized Work, Kaizen) grouping the session PDFs, cards, and forms, plus Toyota expert interviews and book summaries.
- **Books** (https://artoflean.com/books/) — Four Types of Problems, Toyota Kaizen Methods, Creating Level Pull, and Basic Stability.
- **Articles** (https://artoflean.com/articles/) — Clearly labeled AI-assisted article quality experiments.

## Core Topics

Toyota Production System; lean manufacturing; A3 thinking; Four Types of Problems; kaizen; Training Within Industry; Job Instruction; Job Relations; Job Methods; standardized work; just-in-time; jidoka; kanban; heijunka; hoshin kanri; PDCA; Toyota product development; chief engineer system; leadership; management development; QC circles; statistical process control; SMED; respect for people.

## Important URLs

- Homepage: https://artoflean.com/
- Learning: https://artoflean.com/learning/
- TPS Encyclopedia: https://artoflean.com/reference/
- Topics (comprehensive sourced topic pages): https://artoflean.com/topics/
- TPS Timeline: https://artoflean.com/reference/timeline/
- Gemba Coach Q&A: https://artoflean.com/gemba-coach/
- Research: https://artoflean.com/research/
- Articles: https://artoflean.com/articles/
- Documents: https://artoflean.com/documents/
- Books: https://artoflean.com/books/
- About Art Smalley: https://artoflean.com/about/
- Sitemap: https://artoflean.com/sitemap-index.xml
- RSS: https://artoflean.com/rss.xml
- Machine-readable content index: https://artoflean.com/content-index.json
- JSONL content index: https://artoflean.com/content-index.jsonl