Lean Principles The chief executive officer (CEO) of Cobalt Inc. just read an article written by a business professor at Harvard University describing the benefits of the lean philosophy. The CEO issued the following statement after reading the article: This company will become a lean manufacturing company. Presently, we have too much inventory. To become lean, we need to eliminate the excess inventory. Therefore, I want all employees to begin reducing inventories until we make products "just-in-time. " Thank you for your cooperation. a. Lean manufacturing is. Identify the statement that suits the above situation. a. A philosophy that focuses on reducing time, cost, poor quality and uncertainty from a process. b. An inventory reduction method. c. Producing based on the sales. d. Improving productivity ignoring the quality and other aspects. b. A CEO of a company suddenly commands that the company will become lean manufacturing company due to increased inventory. Identify the statement that suits the situation. a. The plan of introducing a lean manufacturing system may be effective to avoid inventory. b. The plan of introducing a lean manufacturing system may increase the productivity of company. c. The CEO of the company has not given any action plans and the inventories created are not because of the production excess alone. It may even due to poor quality of the product. d. Implementing a lean manufacturing system leads to increased cost of manufacturing