Five years ago, the office furniture market hit a slump due largely to the dot-com bust and the 9/11 disasters. Herman Miller Incorporated, an office furniture manufacturing company in Michigan, may have overcome this slump better than most. With assistance from Toyota, the company has created the Herman Miller Production System, modeled after the Toyota manufacturing system of lean production. The company has also adopted Economic Value Added, or EVA accounting methods to more accurately measure performance.
