The MIT International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP) was the large-scale comparative research program that produced the empirical foundation for the Lean framework. It is the research origin of the entire Womack-Jones intellectual project. The program was directed by daniel-roos and involved james-p-womack and daniel-t-jones as lead researchers, alongside John Krafcik, Takahiro Fujimoto, John Paul MacDuffie, and more than 50 senior scientists.
Role in the Lean Transmission Chain
IMVP occupies the research stage of the transmission chain. It produced the comparative automotive manufacturing data that allowed Womack, Jones, and Roos to identify and name what Toyota was doing differently — and to demonstrate, with quantitative evidence, that it was superior to mass production on multiple dimensions. Without IMVP's data, the claims in machine-that-changed-the-world would have been assertion rather than evidence. The codification phase (the books) and the dissemination phase (the institutions) both depend on IMVP's research foundation.
Scale and Funding
IMVP was a $5 million, five-year research program (approximate; unverified against primary sources). The scale — 50+ senior scientists, multiple countries, dozens of assembly plants studied — was what gave the research its comparative power and credibility.
Key Outputs
Successor Program
IMVP was later renamed the Program on Vehicle and Mobility Innovation (PVMI) and relocated from MIT to the University of Pennsylvania. This transition is not yet documented in detail.
Key People
In addition to daniel-roos, james-p-womack, and daniel-t-jones, the IMVP team included john-krafcik (who coined "lean production") and researchers Takahiro Fujimoto and John Paul MacDuffie, who are not yet represented as person entries in this KB.