It is often argued that the success of Japanese manufacturing is due to the basic requirements of lean production with a minimum of fixed costs as concerns the production inputs. E.g. there should be a minimum of investment in machine capacity, that means the minimum of unproductive set-up and idle times, no buffers for materials or finished products and personnel that is universally trained and able to do teamwork. Or, in other words, the general idea of lean production is to have less of everything compared with mass production (WOMACK, JONES and ROOS, 1990, p. 13). The concept has been developed in the TOYOTA motor company, where it gained excellent results during the last decades. Therefore, it is first of all discussed for application in the automobile industry.