Lean Learning Factories: concepts from the past updated to the future

Abstract

Lean Production has its roots in the Toyota Production System, introduced before World War II, and is constantly evolving. Its importance as an organizational management model triggers the need to teach it in the academy. Promptly, Lean Education is being taught all over the world. However, teaching Lean using traditional expositive lectures is not effective, and many academics and practitioners are using active learning methodologies. Lean and Learning Factories, which are two concepts that come from the past, are more than alive nowadays. This paper presents a literature review regarding Lean Learning Factories, based on a scientific articles research at Scopus database. The review was conducted for the period from 1990 to 2021 and resulted in a total of 76 papers. Main findings revealed that the first articles within the context of Lean Learning Factories were published in 2006. The learning factories initiatives were developed by universities and the most used learning strategies are simulations and gamification. Also, the latest configurations of these are in Germany, Austria, and Croatia. The results revealed an increase in the number of publications since 2015, reaching 14 publications in 2020.