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Esd.83 Book Review by Randy Urbance the Machine That Changed the World

The Machine that Changed the World, published in 1991, has been critically and popularly hailed as the definitive source on Japanese manufacturing methods commonly called lean production. James Womack, Daniel Jones and Daniel Roos demystified the Japanese techniques in this book as the culmination of several years of study in the field automotive manufacture. as a part of a worldwide auto manufacturing benchmarking study. Womack, Jones and Roos opened a window into a new way of organizing the production of goods that departed greatly from the traditional American method of mass production. They revealed that a new method of optimizing a whole production system, from suppliers to sales, could offer great advantages over mass production techniques. In order to establish a context for discussing lean production, the authors first discussed the details of the two main non-systems techniques of manufacturing, craft production and mass production. This story starts with old world craft production, which established its dominance in Europe in the years preceding the industrial revolution. In that time, finely skilled craftsmen with general tools made products to exact customer standards. Standardized parts were not available in large quantities to enable large or efficient production runs. Products, especially complex ones like automobiles, required much customization and fitting by craftsman in order to maintain function and quality. As a result craft production was had very low efficiencies and resulted in only small numbers of consumer products entering the upper classes. Henry Ford's assembly line methodology revolutionized production in the early 20 th century by introducing mass production to the manufacturing world. Unskilled workers assembled large numbers of standardized parts into automobiles in a series of short tasks.