Chapter 14 Lean School: A Practical Space of Cooperative Learning from the Factory to the University Ángel Manuel Gento, Juan José de Benito, Pedro Sanz and José Antonio Pascual Abstract In recent years, developing experiential learning has fulfilled the requirement that engineering students fully understand the concept of Lean Manufacturing, or Lean Production, by demonstrating the advantages and disad- vantages of some of their key principles. Learning Factories have been developed to provide students and industrial participants with hands on instruction to learn a manufacturing system that produces small-scale models. In our paper, we describe the Lean School developed in conjunction with an industry partner (Renault) to improve the capabilities of our College of Engineering students and of workers in companies located in the Castile-León region. Keywords Lean manufacturing Á Learning factory Á Learning-by-doing Á Laboratory 1 Introduction Kiichiro Toyoda, Toyota’s president and founder, realised the urgent need to increase productivity in order to ensure the company’s survival. To achieve its mission Toyota began to place a greater emphasis on identifying and eliminating sources of waste within the company. Like any cultural change, this process is Á.M. Gento (&) Á J.J. de Benito Á P. Sanz Á J.A. Pascual Dpto. de Organización de Empresas Y CIM, Escuela de Ingenieros Industriales, Universidad de Valladolid, Paseo del Cauce, 59, 47011 Valladolid, Spain e-mail: gento@eii.uva.es J.J. de Benito e-mail: debenito@eii.uva.es P. Sanz e-mail: psangulo@eii.uva.es J.A. Pascual e-mail: pascual@eii.uva.es © Springer International Publishing AG 2017 C. Hernández (ed.), Advances in Management Engineering, Lecture Notes in Management and Industrial Engineering, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-55889-9_14 209