Lean production (now frequently called Lean manufacturing) has melded into several industries here in the United States, but back when this book was written, it was just catching on. Many of the concepts are still worthwhile in this book, both for the historical significance as well as the lean ideas presented.

The Machine that Changed the World is a fascinating book that teaches what the Japanese learned and how to apply their ideas to the US auto market. Competition is always tough, but these tools provides a competitive advantage to those companies who embrace them and make them part of doing business. Not all ideas are applicable to every application, but there are plenty of diamonds to be farmed here.

Well trained employees, a commitment to excellence by everyone (from the janitor to the CEO), teamwork, flexibility of skill sets, and learning lessons from successes and failures are all important elements of lean manufacturing. Setting up manufacturing lines efficiently, working closely with suppliers, line smoothing, encouraging innovative and cost saving suggestions and much more are also critical lean concepts.

Lean manufacturing doesn't happen overnight and a company and its employees must be diligent in their efforts to put high quality products at reasonable prices out the door.

The Machine that Changed the World is highly rated by many people and should be. It has timeless ideas to produce higher quality products and recommends never being completely satisfied. Well written and researched, this is a top notch book!

The Re-Discovery of Common Sense: A Guide to: The Lost Art of Critical Thinking

Lean production (now frequently called Lean manufacturing) has melded into several industries here in the United States, but back when this book was written, it was just catching on. Many of the concepts are still worthwhile in this book, both for the historical significance as well as the lean ideas presented.

The Machine that Changed the World is a fascinating book that teaches what the Japanese learned and how to apply their ideas to the US auto market. Competition is always tough, but these tools provides a competitive advantage to those companies who embrace them and make them part of doing business. Not all ideas are applicable to every application, but there are plenty of diamonds to be farmed here.

Well trained employees, a commitment to excellence by everyone (from the janitor to the CEO), teamwork, flexibility of skill sets, and learning lessons from successes and failures are all important elements of lean manufacturing. Setting up manufacturing lines efficiently, working closely with suppliers, line smoothing, encouraging innovative and cost saving suggestions and much more are also critical lean concepts.

Lean manufacturing doesn't happen overnight and a company and its employees must be diligent in their efforts to put high quality products at reasonable prices out the door.

The Machine that Changed the World is highly rated by many people and should be. It has timeless ideas to produce higher quality products and recommends never being completely satisfied. Well written and researched, this is a top notch book!

The Re-Discovery of Common Sense: A Guide to: The Lost Art of Critical Thinking

This book, though a revolutionary look at manufacturing (especially when it first came out) and specifically automotive manufacturing, is full of useful information, but dry as a cracker and boring to read if you're not an avid automotive industry enthusiast. If you are one like me, you'll enjoy it.

Lean production started with Henry Ford's car for the masses. Toyota took the old idea of customization combined with mass production to create their mass customization model. Quality is important in the product and focus on what is important to the client allows us to know what qualities make the most difference."If it aint broke don't fix it." Providing an affordable product was 20th century sales. Improving the improvements that are critically important to the client is 21st century marketing. The book proves it through the automotive manufacturing model.

If this this book had been required reading for everyone employed at Chrysler, Ford & GM, the US auto industry may not be in the dire position it is today.

If this this book had been required reading for everyone employed at Chrysler, Ford & GM, the US auto industry may not be in the dire position it is today.

This book provides an excellent introduction to lean techniques. I am college student majoring in mechanical engineering and needed something that could give me an overview of lean production and help me understand how it differs from mass production. The book certainly meets that criteria. While it does not give many case studies of how companies can convert to lean production, "Lean Thinking" by the same authors does do that and is also an excellent book.

The authors performed many years of research before publishing their data and can provide hard numbers to back up their claims that lean production is simply a better method. If you're looking for something to introduce you to lean production, this is the book to get.

The title sets the tone the authors carry throughout the book. A little too much glorifying. A little too much hype. Yes, what Toyota and others did was impressive. But no, they did not change the world. In my opinion, not even close.

And this book is dated. In fact, though written in the early '90s, it reads more like many of the books written about Japanese management in the early '80s. Books like "Japan As Number One." Or "Trading Places." At the time, the Japanese were thought to be able to do no wrong.

Now, of course, we know that Japanese executives and managers are mere mortals too. Toyota has certainly done better than most Japanese companies over the last 15 years. And part of the reason -- a big part probably -- has been the effectiveness of their management in areas like lean production. But even without the benefit of the hindsight we now have, the authors of this book should have realized that their unstinted praise was not warranted. Even for the brains behind Toyota.

Still, this book is the best I have found on the history of the "Industry of Industries." It traces the history of the automobile industry from craft production to mass production to lean production. No other book I have read has done that so well.

And for an academic book, The Machine That Changed the World is easy to read. It keeps a careful balance between informing the reader and keeping the reader's interest. Most writers, particularly of works like this, tilt too much one way or the other. Either too dry and pedantic or too light and entertaining. A happy medium is hard to achieve.

Where does the auto industry go from here? Lean production is no longer exceptional. It has become the rule. But it seems to have run its course.

The future of the automobile industry may lie in "collaborative production." Major automakers concentrate on sales and service, not production. Suppliers develop specialized skills in technologies from hybrid power trains to drive-by-wire control systems. And everyone sells to everyone else. Technology becomes less important than brand.

If that is the case, Toyota may still lead the pack. In Business Week's list of the top 100 global brands, Toyota leads all carmakers at number 7. No one has caught Toyota napping on the increasing importance of brand.

Even so, Toyota fiercely defends the idea that is a motor company, not a sales company. Innovative technology and excellent manufacturing have been much more of a focus than sales. Will it be able to adapt if the industry does change?

An interesting question that we should see answered in the next few years. Like many good history books, The Machine That Changed the World gives us hints as to what that future will be.

The title sets the tone the authors carry throughout the book. A little too much glorifying. A little too much hype. Yes, what Toyota and others did was impressive. But no, they did not change the world. In my opinion, not even close.

And this book is dated. In fact, though written in the early '90s, it reads more like many of the books written about Japanese management in the early '80s. Books like "Japan As Number One." Or "Trading Places." At the time, the Japanese were thought to be able to do no wrong.

Now, of course, we know that Japanese executives and managers are mere mortals too. Toyota has certainly done better than most Japanese companies over the last 15 years. And part of the reason -- a big part probably -- has been the effectiveness of their management in areas like lean production. But even without the benefit of the hindsight we now have, the authors of this book should have realized that their unstinted praise was not warranted. Even for the brains behind Toyota.

Still, this book is the best I have found on the history of the "Industry of Industries." It traces the history of the automobile industry from craft production to mass production to lean production. No other book I have read has done that so well.

And for an academic book, The Machine That Changed the World is easy to read. It keeps a careful balance between informing the reader and keeping the reader's interest. Most writers, particularly of works like this, tilt too much one way or the other. Either too dry and pedantic or too light and entertaining. A happy medium is hard to achieve.

Where does the auto industry go from here? Lean production is no longer exceptional. It has become the rule. But it seems to have run its course.

The future of the automobile industry may lie in "collaborative production." Major automakers concentrate on sales and service, not production. Suppliers develop specialized skills in technologies from hybrid power trains to drive-by-wire control systems. And everyone sells to everyone else. Technology becomes less important than brand.

If that is the case, Toyota may still lead the pack. In Business Week's list of the top 100 global brands, Toyota leads all carmakers at number 7. No one has caught Toyota napping on the increasing importance of brand.

Even so, Toyota fiercely defends the idea that is a motor company, not a sales company. Innovative technology and excellent manufacturing have been much more of a focus than sales. Will it be able to adapt if the industry does change?

An interesting question that we should see answered in the next few years.

_The Machine the Changed the World_ by Womack, Jones & Roos is nominally about how Japanese carmakers came up with new ways to meet some difficult challenges. But really, it is about lean manufacturing and why lean manufacturing should be successor to current mass-production methods.

The authors did much of their research for the book while working at the International Motor Vehicle Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That program was sponsored by a large number of car companies who wanted to understand why the Japanese way of manufacturing (especially as practiced by Toyota) had had such different results from older American & European car companies.

Consequently, the book does focus entirely on the automotive industry. Originally, the first automobiles were custom-made (and often handmade) to the exact specifications of individual buyers, who were usually quite wealthy. Henry Ford wanted to get beyond that and create an automobile that did not need hand-fitting and hand-crafting of every single piece, and that could be built by people who had not already spent ten years in an apprenticeship for a very specific and specialized craft. In his efforts to get beyond the craftsman era, Ford developed a lot of the concepts and attitudes that still define mass-production today.

For decades, manufacturers and especially car assemblers from all over the world would make a pilgrimage to Ford Motor Co. to better understand what wondrous thing this was that Ford had created. Among those was Eiji Toyoda, a member of the family that had founded Toyota Motor Company. While he found much of Ford's work interesting, he also saw a lot of wasted time & effort. Furthermore, Toyota was faced with some challenges that neither Ford (Ford Motor Co.) or Alfred Sloan (General Motors) had ever had to deal with, such as a work force that they almost could not fire, and a severe lack of investment funds.

In dealing with those challenges and in trying to eliminate waste, Toyota Motor Company (and many other Japanese companies) developed what it today known as "lean" manufacturing.

Unfortunately, most presentations of "lean" in the U.S. seem to focus on some of the surface features, such as smaller batch runs, a focus on a neat & orderly work space, and not carrying a lot of inventory.

This is where _The Machine That Changed the World_ really shines, because it explores the thought processes behind the surface features, and explains how lean thinking affects every department of a company, not just manufacturing. The requirements & results of a lean mentality in purchasing, product design, and marketing are all examined as well.

The book was published in 1991, and is therefore a bit dated in some respects. The authors look very favorably towards the Japanese banking & finance system, yet that same system has been having ongoing problems since the mid-1990s. The authors predicted a number of problems -- in marketing, market share, and labor relations -- for GM, Chrysler, and Ford, as well as many of the European auto makers. While I know some of those predictions have come to pass, I would dearly love to see a second edition of this book that goes into more detail about what has happened in the automotive industry during the last 15 years.

Finally, I would have liked to have seen some discussion about implementing a company-wide lean structure in an American company. I have seen references in numerous books to Americans having atypical attitudes regarding individuality vs. other cultures that stress a conformance with society, and while I do believe the lean mentality could (and probably should) be implemented almost anywhere, I think there will be some specific aspects of American culture that will force a slightly different implementation than was done in Japan.

Japan manufacturing revolutionized the automobile industry. Japan transformed the automobile industry by applying ideal perfection conditions of zero defect products, reduced inventories, and the generation of endless product inventories. How did Japan accomplish this breakaway? Lean production is the answer. Lean production allowed the Japanese to reduce human labor by ½, manufacturing production space by ½, capital investment by ½, required engineering hours by ½, and reduced production time by ½. US automobile companies were on the defensive and rather than compete head to head in quality and competitiveness with their Japanese counterparts they sought refuge in the political system.

Government aid to home-owned companies is counter-productive over the long term. The political system weakened US automobile companies by artificially boasting their US car value short-term through trade tariffs and barriers. The Japanese believed consumers would select the best quality products, at the cheapest price. In the 80s this was true, but in the 90s and 20th century consumers paid higher price for quality comfort, power, prestige, and brand. Profit, volume, engineering quality, and diversity characterized Japanese vehicles. Americans wanted Japanese vehicles and were willing to pay the price for them. The political system would not be able too save American jobs through tariffs.

Japanese companies used financing to expand companies in North America and Europe. The political system would produce Japanese cars on America soil with American workers as the only viable solution. US automobile industry would have to compete head to head against the Japanese car industry on their own. Cars had become a global commodity and the market would determine their value in the global market. The political barriers did little to stop Japanese marketing success, product introduction, market dominance; by 1980, it was inevitable that the Japanese automobile industry would over take and dominate the US car market. Political invention could not stop the raw forces of global economics.

Womack believes that US manufacturing capability is equal with Japan and competitions gap between the two countries could be reduce, if America adopts lean production. Every mass producer needs a lean producer across the road. Mass producers change when they see a concrete lean producer. The problem is North America and the English have not made rapid movement towards lean production. The secondary problem is mass producers in the West need a better system of industrial financing. Bottom line, mass producers need a crisis, to truly change. Investor and bankers need to help when the crisis comes. Corporate culture needs to change removing excess workers immediately. Lean production benefits the company and the consumer by lowering the amount of high wage effort to produce a product and lean product methods keep reducing operations through continuous improvement.

Lean production combines craft manufacturing with mass production techniques. Each year 50 million cars are produced and 8 out of the 50 million cars are excess. Craft uses highly skilled workers and flexible tools. The mass producer may be either skilled or unskilled and is characterized by his high volume of product. The power of assembly line design is the "complete interchangeability of part". A part is integrate, predesigned, preassembled and like a lego snapped, screwed, twisted into place by a human or machine dexterity. The simplicity of attaching the parts together is the secret. Maintenance and repair also benefits from the easy of attachment in the part design. Eiji Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno liked interchangeable design. Toyoda and Ohno bought tools that allowed stamping, pressing, cutting of car parts with absolute precision. The tools were used in high volume product environments and they represented low or no cost setup.

Korea has been rapidly adopting lean production and claim it will surpass Japanese automobile industry by 2008. In 1979, Korea's first automotive company started production of the pony. Hyundai licensed design rights from Mitsubishi. Korea MITI authorized incorporation of three other companies Daewoo, Kia, and Dong A.

Japan reacted too the Korean competition by cutting prices. Korea MITI mandated a five year shutdown for Kia and Dong A and assigned Hyundai to build smaller cars and Daewoo the larger cars. Hyundai delivers an winning design car, the Excel. The Excel is licensed from Mitisubishi;s Colt design and used to create high volume exports to the US. The strategy: "It would compete by underpricing the Japanese entry level cars, based on low wages and high volume". Excel sales grew to 350,000 per year. Hyundai would bring a new plant online with a capacity of 300,000 cars per year. Kia would come back into the market and being build a car modeled o the Mazda 121. Japan would focus on maintain the market for high quality cars. In 1988, Korean cars represented 4% of the market or 50,000 cars a year imported into the US. In 1989, Hyundai would open a 100,000 car/year plant in Bromont Quebec and the transplant company would produce the Sonata. Korea ambition started with high defects in their cars, swings in the sales, and poor reputation. MIT graduates Korean engineers and they bring back knowledge to their home own companies. Lean production leverages this skill to produce some of the best designed cars in the world. The result is endless diversity of product, cheaper price, and better quality.

Japan must build a global presence by creating a international personnel system. Workers need to be given language skills and exposure to management in different regions of the world. Japan must abandon their narrow national perspective and create innovators in a post national, multi-regional corporate form.

Brazil must adopt lean production and move their country towards world-class production. Brazil must open its country to imports. This will help producers balance trade ledgers. Brazil will need to integrate production systems with Argentina.

The rise of Lean production starts with Toyota. The new emerging Toyota faced many problems: 1. Small domestic markets 2. Crowded cities and high energy prices 3. Japanese workers were no longer willing to be treated as a variable cost or as interchangeable parts. 4. Company unions strengthened themselves. In 1946, MITI following promptings from American political entities strengthened the rights of unions which imposed severe restrictions on the ability of the company owners to fire workers.5. The Japanese economy was starved for capital and foreign exchange. 6. Outside motor vehicle producers were anxious to establish operations in Japan. Japan was losing its advantage of lower wage work force, faced the possibility of no new product offerings, and nothing new in production techniques.

Ashton Marton introduced the stamp and die technique of taking sheet metal and forming into parts. The process started with a large roll of sheet steel. A blanking press converted the steel sheets into blanks the size of the part. The blanks are then inserted into a massive stamping press with matched upper and lower dies and the 2D sheet of metal is transformed into a 3D shape. The dies could be changed, so the same press line could make many parts. There were problems in changing the die. First, the die weighted many tons each. Second, the workers had to align the dies with absolute precision to prevent melt down of the metal. Third, the die change took a day duration and the workers had to follow methodical replacement processes. Ohno's idea was to develop simple die changing technique reducing the die change to two - three hours. Ohno perfected his technique for quick die change reaching an astonishing 2-3 minute change duration. Ohno needed skilled and motivated work force; the work force need to take initiative and anticipate problems for they happened. One problem could bring the complete factory to a halt. In 1940s, US credit tightened too much and it slowed down world economic growth. In response, Toyoda reduced labor by firing ¼ of the employees and then resigned taking responsibility for the company's failure. Toyoda became members of the Toyota community. Toyoda offer life time employment and then worked to get the most from his human resources. Employees contributed because they did not want to start over in a new company and lose their seniority level wages.

Principles of Lean Production: 1. Ease of assembly requires design engineering commitment and investment 2. Automation accounts for 1/3 of the the productivity gains 3. Smaller work space means less inventory near the worker 4. Lean Production seeks perfect assembly and quality on the first time where workers identify defective parts immediately and send them to quality circles for inspection and determination where the the quality team initiates corrective action and repair at the root cause. 5. Lean production defines standards upon which vendors must adhere. Standardization improves interchangiability of parts, size, and performance helping assure universal quality is maintained. Standardization creates more determinism in the process, reduces confusion, and aligns expectations of the assemblers with the vendors. 6. In Lean production, a worker has the power to stop the production line, but this rarely happens because workers are given the power to voice problems, defects, and improvements. The anticipation and initiative prevent problems from forming on the line and keep vulnerabilty too a minimum. 7. Lean production is characterized by more productivity per hour, less space per worker, smaller inventories, more team involvement from functional departements, more job rotation, more training of new production workers. 8. The polling system means that a worker builds to his basket, just in time delivery, no waste of excess labor, no wasted parts caused by defect, and no excess inventories. 9. Quality circles keep improving the assembly process in a contineous cycle.

Lean production techniques: Lean production starts with a Large project leader, the leader of the team, who designs and engineers the new product. The LPL is a position that carries great power. The LPL is the supercraftsman direction the process to complex for one person to handle. Teamwork in lean production means forming tight knit cohesive groups of individuals from different functional departments of the company to build a product. The LPL judges performance of the individuals. The individuals performanace will determine their next assignment.

Japan manufacturing revolutionized the automobile industry. Japan transformed the automobile industry by applying ideal perfection conditions of zero defect products, reduced inventories, and the generation of endless product inventories. How did Japan accomplish this breakaway? Lean production is the answer. Lean production allowed the Japanese to reduce human labor by ½, manufacturing production space by ½, capital investment by ½, required engineering hours by ½, and reduced production time by ½. US automobile companies were on the defensive and rather than compete head to head in quality and competitiveness with their Japanese counterparts they sought refuge in the political system.

Government aid to home-owned companies is counter-productive over the long term. The political system weakened US automobile companies by artificially boasting their US car value short-term through trade tariffs and barriers. The Japanese believed consumers would select the best quality products, at the cheapest price. In the 80s this was true, but in the 90s and 20th century consumers paid higher price for quality comfort, power, prestige, and brand. Profit, volume, engineering quality, and diversity characterized Japanese vehicles. Americans wanted Japanese vehicles and were willing to pay the price for them. The political system would not be able too save American jobs through tariffs.

Japanese companies used financing to expand companies in North America and Europe. The political system would produce Japanese cars on America soil with American workers as the only viable solution. US automobile industry would have to compete head to head against the Japanese car industry on their own. Cars had become a global commodity and the market would determine their value in the global market. The political barriers did little to stop Japanese marketing success, product introduction, market dominance; by 1980, it was inevitable that the Japanese automobile industry would over take and dominate the US car market. Political invention could not stop the raw forces of global economics.

Womack believes that US manufacturing capability is equal with Japan and competitions gap between the two countries could be reduce, if America adopts lean production. Every mass producer needs a lean producer across the road. Mass producers change when they see a concrete lean producer. The problem is North America and the English have not made rapid movement towards lean production. The secondary problem is mass producers in the West need a better system of industrial financing. Bottom line, mass producers need a crisis, to truly change. Investor and bankers need to help when the crisis comes. Corporate culture needs to change removing excess workers immediately. Lean production benefits the company and the consumer by lowering the amount of high wage effort to produce a product and lean product methods keep reducing operations through continuous improvement.

Lean production combines craft manufacturing with mass production techniques. Each year 50 million cars are produced and 8 out of the 50 million cars are excess. Craft uses highly skilled workers and flexible tools. The mass producer may be either skilled or unskilled and is characterized by his high volume of product. The power of assembly line design is the "complete interchangeability of part". A part is integrate, predesigned, preassembled and like a lego snapped, screwed, twisted into place by a human or machine dexterity. The simplicity of attaching the parts together is the secret. Maintenance and repair also benefits from the easy of attachment in the part design. Eiji Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno liked interchangeable design. Toyoda and Ohno bought tools that allowed stamping, pressing, cutting of car parts with absolute precision. The tools were used in high volume product environments and they represented low or no cost setup.

Korea has been rapidly adopting lean production and claim it will surpass Japanese automobile industry by 2008. In 1979, Korea's first automotive company started production of the pony. Hyundai licensed design rights from Mitsubishi. Korea MITI authorized incorporation of three other companies Daewoo, Kia, and Dong A.

Japan reacted too the Korean competition by cutting prices. Korea MITI mandated a five year shutdown for Kia and Dong A and assigned Hyundai to build smaller cars and Daewoo the larger cars. Hyundai delivers an winning design car, the Excel. The Excel is licensed from Mitisubishi;s Colt design and used to create high volume exports to the US. The strategy: "It would compete by underpricing the Japanese entry level cars, based on low wages and high volume". Excel sales grew to 350,000 per year. Hyundai would bring a new plant online with a capacity of 300,000 cars per year. Kia would come back into the market and being build a car modeled o the Mazda 121. Japan would focus on maintain the market for high quality cars. In 1988, Korean cars represented 4% of the market or 50,000 cars a year imported into the US. In 1989, Hyundai would open a 100,000 car/year plant in Bromont Quebec and the transplant company would produce the Sonata. Korea ambition started with high defects in their cars, swings in the sales, and poor reputation. MIT graduates Korean engineers and they bring back knowledge to their home own companies. Lean production leverages this skill to produce some of the best designed cars in the world. The result is endless diversity of product, cheaper price, and better quality.

Japan must build a global presence by creating a international personnel system. Workers need to be given language skills and exposure to management in different regions of the world. Japan must abandon their narrow national perspective and create innovators in a post national, multi-regional corporate form.

Brazil must adopt lean production and move their country towards world-class production. Brazil must open its country to imports. This will help producers balance trade ledgers. Brazil will need to integrate production systems with Argentina.

The rise of Lean production starts with Toyota. The new emerging Toyota faced many problems: 1. Small domestic markets 2. Crowded cities and high energy prices 3. Japanese workers were no longer willing to be treated as a variable cost or as interchangeable parts. 4. Company unions strengthened themselves. In 1946, MITI following promptings from American political entities strengthened the rights of unions which imposed severe restrictions on the ability of the company owners to fire workers.5. The Japanese economy was starved for capital and foreign exchange. 6. Outside motor vehicle producers were anxious to establish operations in Japan. Japan was losing its advantage of lower wage work force, faced the possibility of no new product offerings, and nothing new in production techniques.

Ashton Marton introduced the stamp and die technique of taking sheet metal and forming into parts. The process started with a large roll of sheet steel. A blanking press converted the steel sheets into blanks the size of the part. The blanks are then inserted into a massive stamping press with matched upper and lower dies and the 2D sheet of metal is transformed into a 3D shape. The dies could be changed, so the same press line could make many parts. There were problems in changing the die. First, the die weighted many tons each. Second, the workers had to align the dies with absolute precision to prevent melt down of the metal. Third, the die change took a day duration and the workers had to follow methodical replacement processes. Ohno's idea was to develop simple die changing technique reducing the die change to two - three hours. Ohno perfected his technique for quick die change reaching an astonishing 2-3 minute change duration. Ohno needed skilled and motivated work force; the work force need to take initiative and anticipate problems for they happened. One problem could bring the complete factory to a halt. In 1940s, US credit tightened too much and it slowed down world economic growth. In response, Toyoda reduced labor by firing ¼ of the employees and then resigned taking responsibility for the company's failure. Toyoda became members of the Toyota community. Toyoda offer life time employment and then worked to get the most from his human resources. Employees contributed because they did not want to start over in a new company and lose their seniority level wages.

Principles of Lean Production: 1. Ease of assembly requires design engineering commitment and investment 2. Automation accounts for 1/3 of the the productivity gains 3. Smaller work space means less inventory near the worker 4. Lean Production seeks perfect assembly and quality on the first time where workers identify defective parts immediately and send them to quality circles for inspection and determination where the the quality team initiates corrective action and repair at the root cause. 5. Lean production defines standards upon which vendors must adhere. Standardization improves interchangiability of parts, size, and performance helping assure universal quality is maintained. Standardization creates more determinism in the process, reduces confusion, and aligns expectations of the assemblers with the vendors. 6. In Lean production, a worker has the power to stop the production line, but this rarely happens because workers are given the power to voice problems, defects, and improvements. The anticipation and initiative prevent problems from forming on the line and keep vulnerabilty too a minimum. 7. Lean production is characterized by more productivity per hour, less space per worker, smaller inventories, more team involvement from functional departements, more job rotation, more training of new production workers. 8. The polling system means that a worker builds to his basket, just in time delivery, no waste of excess labor, no wasted parts caused by defect, and no excess inventories. 9. Quality circles keep improving the assembly process in a contineous cycle.

Lean production techniques: Lean production starts with a Large project leader, the leader of the team, who designs and engineers the new product. The LPL is a position that carries great power. The LPL is the supercraftsman direction the process to complex for one person to handle. Teamwork in lean production means forming tight knit cohesive groups of individuals from different functional departments of the company to build a product. The LPL judges performance of the individuals. The individuals performanace will determine their next assignment.

Japan manufacturing revolutionized the automobile industry. Japan transformed the automobile industry by applying ideal perfection conditions of zero defect products, reduced inventories, and the generation of endless product inventories. How did Japan accomplish this breakaway? Lean production is the answer. Lean production allowed the Japanese to reduce human labor by ½, manufacturing production space by ½, capital investment by ½, required engineering hours by ½, and reduced production time by ½. US automobile companies were on the defensive and rather than compete head to head in quality and competitiveness with their Japanese counterparts they sought refuge in the political system.

Government aid to home-owned companies is counter-productive over the long term. The political system weakened US automobile companies by artificially boasting their US car value short-term through trade tariffs and barriers. The Japanese believed consumers would select the best quality products, at the cheapest price. In the 80s this was true, but in the 90s and 20th century consumers paid higher price for quality comfort, power, prestige, and brand. Profit, volume, engineering quality, and diversity characterized Japanese vehicles. Americans wanted Japanese vehicles and were willing to pay the price for them. The political system would not be able too save American jobs through tariffs.

Japanese companies used financing to expand companies in North America and Europe. The political system would produce Japanese cars on America soil with American workers as the only viable solution. US automobile industry would have to compete head to head against the Japanese car industry on their own. Cars had become a global commodity and the market would determine their value in the global market. The political barriers did little to stop Japanese marketing success, product introduction, market dominance; by 1980, it was inevitable that the Japanese automobile industry would over take and dominate the US car market. Political invention could not stop the raw forces of global economics.

Womack believes that US manufacturing capability is equal with Japan and competitions gap between the two countries could be reduce, if America adopts lean production. Every mass producer needs a lean producer across the road. Mass producers change when they see a concrete lean producer. The problem is North America and the English have not made rapid movement towards lean production. The secondary problem is mass producers in the West need a better system of industrial financing. Bottom line, mass producers need a crisis, to truly change. Investor and bankers need to help when the crisis comes. Corporate culture needs to change removing excess workers immediately. Lean production benefits the company and the consumer by lowering the amount of high wage effort to produce a product and lean product methods keep reducing operations through continuous improvement.

Lean production combines craft manufacturing with mass production techniques. Each year 50 million cars are produced and 8 out of the 50 million cars are excess. Craft uses highly skilled workers and flexible tools. The mass producer may be either skilled or unskilled and is characterized by his high volume of product. The power of assembly line design is the "complete interchangeability of part". A part is integrate, predesigned, preassembled and like a lego snapped, screwed, twisted into place by a human or machine dexterity. The simplicity of attaching the parts together is the secret. Maintenance and repair also benefits from the easy of attachment in the part design. Eiji Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno liked interchangeable design. Toyoda and Ohno bought tools that allowed stamping, pressing, cutting of car parts with absolute precision. The tools were used in high volume product environments and they represented low or no cost setup.

Korea has been rapidly adopting lean production and claim it will surpass Japanese automobile industry by 2008. In 1979, Korea's first automotive company started production of the pony. Hyundai licensed design rights from Mitsubishi. Korea MITI authorized incorporation of three other companies Daewoo, Kia, and Dong A.

Japan reacted too the Korean competition by cutting prices. Korea MITI mandated a five year shutdown for Kia and Dong A and assigned Hyundai to build smaller cars and Daewoo the larger cars. Hyundai delivers an winning design car, the Excel. The Excel is licensed from Mitisubishi;s Colt design and used to create high volume exports to the US. The strategy: "It would compete by underpricing the Japanese entry level cars, based on low wages and high volume". Excel sales grew to 350,000 per year. Hyundai would bring a new plant online with a capacity of 300,000 cars per year. Kia would come back into the market and being build a car modeled o the Mazda 121. Japan would focus on maintain the market for high quality cars. In 1988, Korean cars represented 4% of the market or 50,000 cars a year imported into the US. In 1989, Hyundai would open a 100,000 car/year plant in Bromont Quebec and the transplant company would produce the Sonata. Korea ambition started with high defects in their cars, swings in the sales, and poor reputation. MIT graduates Korean engineers and they bring back knowledge to their home own companies. Lean production leverages this skill to produce some of the best designed cars in the world. The result is endless diversity of product, cheaper price, and better quality.

Japan must build a global presence by creating a international personnel system. Workers need to be given language skills and exposure to management in different regions of the world. Japan must abandon their narrow national perspective and create innovators in a post national, multi-regional corporate form.

Brazil must adopt lean production and move their country towards world-class production. Brazil must open its country to imports. This will help producers balance trade ledgers. Brazil will need to integrate production systems with Argentina.

The rise of Lean production starts with Toyota. The new emerging Toyota faced many problems: 1. Small domestic markets 2. Crowded cities and high energy prices 3. Japanese workers were no longer willing to be treated as a variable cost or as interchangeable parts. 4. Company unions strengthened themselves. In 1946, MITI following promptings from American political entities strengthened the rights of unions which imposed severe restrictions on the ability of the company owners to fire workers.5. The Japanese economy was starved for capital and foreign exchange. 6. Outside motor vehicle producers were anxious to establish operations in Japan. Japan was losing its advantage of lower wage work force, faced the possibility of no new product offerings, and nothing new in production techniques.

Ashton Marton introduced the stamp and die technique of taking sheet metal and forming into parts. The process started with a large roll of sheet steel. A blanking press converted the steel sheets into blanks the size of the part. The blanks are then inserted into a massive stamping press with matched upper and lower dies and the 2D sheet of metal is transformed into a 3D shape. The dies could be changed, so the same press line could make many parts. There were problems in changing the die. First, the die weighted many tons each. Second, the workers had to align the dies with absolute precision to prevent melt down of the metal. Third, the die change took a day duration and the workers had to follow methodical replacement processes. Ohno's idea was to develop simple die changing technique reducing the die change to two - three hours. Ohno perfected his technique for quick die change reaching an astonishing 2-3 minute change duration. Ohno needed skilled and motivated work force; the work force need to take initiative and anticipate problems for they happened. One problem could bring the complete factory to a halt. In 1940s, US credit tightened too much and it slowed down world economic growth. In response, Toyoda reduced labor by firing ¼ of the employees and then resigned taking responsibility for the company's failure. Toyoda became members of the Toyota community. Toyoda offer life time employment and then worked to get the most from his human resources. Employees contributed because they did not want to start over in a new company and lose their seniority level wages.

Japan manufacturing efficient revolutionized the automobile industry. Japan transformed the automobile industry by seeking perfection meaning zero defect products, reduced inventories, and generation of endless product inventories. How did Japan accomplish this breakaway? Lean production is the answer. Lean production allowed the Japanese to reduce human labor by ½, manufacturing production space by ½, capital investment by ½, required engineering hours by ½, and reduced production time by ½. US automobile companies were on the defensive and rather than compete head to head in quality and competitiveness with their Japanese counterparts they sought refuge in the political system. The political system weakened US automobile companies by artificially boasting their US car value short-term through trade tariffs and barriers. The Japanese believed consumers would select the best quality products at the cheapest price. In the 80s this was true, but in the 90s and 20th century consumers paid higher price for qualitym comfort, power, prestige, and brand. Profit, volume, engineering quality, and diversity characterized Japanese vehicles. American wanted Japanese vehicles and were willing to pay the price for them. The political system would not be able too save American jobs through tariffs. The political system would produce Japanese cars on America soil with American workers as the only viable solution. US automobile industry would have to compete head to head against the Japanese car industry on their own. Cars had become a global commodity and the market would determine their value in the global market. The political barriers did little to stop Japanese marketing success, product introduction, market dominance; by 1980, it was inevitable that the Japanese automobile industry would over take and dominate the US car market. Political invention could not stop the raw forces of global economics.

Lean production combines craft manufacturing with mass production techniques. Each year 50 million cars are produced and 8 out of the 50 million cars are excess. Craft uses highly skilled workers and flexible tools. The mass producer may be either skilled or unskilled and is characterized by his high volume of product. The power of assembly line design is the "complete interchangeability of part". A part is integrate, predesigned, preassembled and like a lego snapped, screwed, twisted into place by a human or machine dexterity. The simplicity of attaching the parts together is the secret. Maintenance and repair also benefits from the easy of attachment in the part design. Eiji Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno liked interchangeable design. Toyoda and Ohno bought tools that allowed stamping, pressing, cutting of car parts with absolute precision. The tools were used in high volume product environments and they represented low or no cost setup.

The vision and purpose of Lean production is for implementation into every business. Lean production brings cheaper, better, and endless inventory of product into the market.

This is a fairly poorly researched book, despite the authors' credentials; their history of American automobiles is grossly inaccurate and only serves to reinforce incorrect stereotypes. They spend very little time actually describing lean production, preferring to talk about how every other company will go bankrupt because they don't have it. The misreading of the Volvo story is also rather galling, though to be fair, Volvo's team-based approach was already being dismantled (for non-
by the time this book was written. This book is a product of the late 1980s, and should be regarded as a period piece rather than a serious academic work, though to be fair there are many lessons for manufacturers in it.

For those of you long in the tooth you may recall John Cameron Swayze's love-in with Timex watches where in a 60 second commercial he would submit the watch to behemoth like torture, rodeo riding, outboard motors, and then hold the watch up and say, 'it takes a licking and keeps on ticking.'

So the Toyota Production System (TPS) makes their now famous pilgrimage to the US Auto workers and are soundly - rejected.

The important part of this is not so much that we refused to accept their business points and authorities but raher that they did it so well, and went back to doing it so well.

The TPS includes paying by seniority, not position, no American type manager, group consultation sessions of representative workers to make important decisions, performance maintenance, 1/3rd the production defects and you could go on.

We won't adapt that style of business because of the polarizartion of labor and management and a host of other reasons. However, it's a good lesson to read in other businesses where leaders may consider adopting some of the more successful portions of TPS. 5 stars. Larry Scantlebury

This book is certainly a kind of milestone in the auto literature history. Yet, for today's readers it is probably not the first choice to read. The huge impact the book had and its benefit is that it rightly lifts the Toyota production system (TSP) to the status of the Ford assembly line and other revolutionary inventions in production organisation. It declares TSP as the successor of Fordian mass production.

There were books about the TPS before, notably the book of Taiichi Ohno in the mid-1980s, one of the principal creators of TSP, but the audience was not sure about its real significance. TSP came a long way from the 1950s and its development was evolutionary rather than instantaneous. Its deployment was painstaking and required a lot of Japanese perseverance. The Japanese deserve all the credit for pulling that through. With this book the MIT plays a kind of authority in the history of production technology and bestows TSP official recognition. For today, the book is still interesting to read from a historical perspective but if you want to get into the details of the history of TSP Fujiomoto's "Evolution of a Manufacturing System' is probably the best choice today.

The problem with "the machine that changed the world" (besides its title) is that is to one-side and totally uncritical of the Japanese manufacturers. This was probably necessary to ring the alarm bells at the time but it was not justified. The decade following the publicaton of the book would show that the Toyota system involved certain risks and idiosyncracies of the Japanese market context. (It is interesting to note that only Cusamano, who worked on the product development part of the MIT project without being an author of the book, acknowledges the high risk of escalating design costs that would later push Nissan to the verge of bankruptcy). For Madzda and Mitsubishi TPS was very problematic as well. While the authors are totally concentrating on production systems, which is ok, it is not the single success factor in auto industry as the authors implicitly suggest. They almost treat cars as a commodity, exchangeable, only attributed by quality and certain design criteria. The ranking the book presents is based on production efficiency (first, Japanese, second come US firms, and the Europeans are the worst of the worst). Yet, it makes it very difficult to understand the sustained success of the French and German car industry. Admittingly, the UK industry went downhill, but at the same time Spain became one of the biggest auto production location in the world. What the authors (professors of production technology) neglect is that the European market and the Japanese market are very different from the US market.
First, local markets have very different preferences. Auto companies in Europe, Japan and the US have a strong home market advantages by perceiving and responding to these home preferences much earlier. Second, local requirements are very different as Porter notices in his book about the competitive advantage of nations. For instance, German autobahns require top performance, high fuel prices in Europe make European cars more fuel efficent and so on. The real success of the Japanese in the US came when they started to develop cars solely for the US market needs which were then manufactured with the quality the TSP system achieves.
As a result of the Japanese focus on the US market, they were never really successful in Europe, where performance, innovative technology and design ranks somehow relatively higher than in Japan and the US.

Yet, Toyota's sustained global success indicates that they have created a marvellous production system that is worth studying. But it is not very easy to understand in all its parts, that is has not been until today fully adopted by companies outside Japan demonstrate its complexity or dependence on the Japanese market context

This book is probably the best book on the automobile industry with respect to the rise and fall of the American and European auto manufacturers vis-a-vis the Japanese. While the Americans have made great strides in recent years the roots of their near demise are clearly exposed in this book. Some European manufacturers have learned from their mistakes but many have not and still produce cars that are more fabled than truly well designed and executed. The English auto industry took this to their grave. The Germans are still struggling to get their cars to equal their price premium in all respects not just performance or handling. In the end the Japanese have taught the whole world what it takes to deisgn and build a car.

The Machine That Changed the World; The Story of Lean Production
A great book that although becoming a little outdated portrays the ongoing trends in the automobile production industry in three major cultural areas.
The three areas are;the Asian lean production (Toyota) v.s. the American system,(mass production) v.s. the European craftsman system. On a larger scale it will and is affecting manufacturing everywhere.
Henry Ford was the founder of the American mass production system, and Ford was very successful adopting it to the aircraft and steel industries. American companies adopted this system and it is one of the main reasons for American pre-eminence in many industries worldwide. Toyota has become the founder of the Lean system of manufacturing. Most of the
early adherents to this system were other large Japanese companies, and responsible for the Japanese manufacturing miracle since the 1960's, as it was adapted from automotive to all manner of industries.
The book is well written and interesting even though it is based on an MIT study of global trends in the auto industry. I would like to see an update to this book. The one anomaly I see is the German Automobile industry. If Japan and Korea have some of the most efficient auto manufacturing plants in the world and
North America is becoming more competitive, what is happening in Europe comes as no surprise. Many European automakers have yet to fully embrace American mass production techniques and are now faced with the greater efficiencies of Lean
production. The book does not explain in my mind the success of the German Auto industry. It seems to be the one exception to the rule.

If you are just starting out learning about Lean Manufacturing, and you only have time to read one book, "The Machine that Changed the World" is an historically important book but "Lean Thinking" is the one that actually gets you started toward implementation. It's one of those rare occasions where the sequel was better than the original.

This is the first book that I planned to read as a part of learning about lean, the other two books are "Lean thinking" and "Becoming Lean" , so far I could say that the "Machine that Changed the World" is a good benchmarking between craft, mass and lean producers. It mainly gives you an insight of the differences between lean and mass producers from the production, sales, marketing, customer relation and other dimensions. If you don't know about lean I really recommend you to start by reading his book because it will make you start to think in a lean way, if you know about lean and convinced about what it can do to you organization start with lean thinking and then go to "Becoming Lean".
This book is aimed at strategic level and as a key tool to convince old timers about the lean-mentality against the push-mentality.

I usually refer to this kind of books as "Open Minds", are written in a very simple way that may seem that the content is simple, BUT IS NOT. This book is in my opinion a must read for any Industrial Engineers, Managers, Supervisors. It can be used also for training and kaizen events.
Silly is that one that reads this book expecting that he will know everything about lean manufacturing, JIT, or modern IE.
In summary, this book is the entrance to a new world with a new way of thinking and doing thins and it is a necessary complement to any technical book.

This book is a classic on the advantages of being lean - Product Design, Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management - the entire gamut from concept to delivery in the Automobile industry.

What Ford's mass production did to craft production and its profound effects on the developed economies in the first half of the last century is an old but interesting story. With the advent of Ford's manufacturing techniques, there was a consolidation in the Auto industry. Within a couple of decades the number of automobile manufacturers fell from over a hundred to less than twenty and the big three cornering over ninety percent of the market share. Detroit became the center of pilgrimage for the rest of the world trying to emulate and replicate this success story in other continents.

Silently, the Japanese led by Toyota were working on a different concept of putting the automobile in the hands of the customer, at better quality, lesser costs, shorter development times and with the ability to offer a wider choice. The statistics collected from these "lean systems" is mind boggling. The competitive advantage that Japan enjoyed over the American system was neither due to lower wages in Japan nor due to higher levels of automation as widely believed. It was primarily the lean machine that was conquering the mass machine.

This book is based on the research done in the 1980's and published around 1990. The authors while acclaiming lean manufacturing as the panacea for the ills of manufacturing systems globally had at the time of the research and the publication of this work, probably ignored the next major change that would sweep across continents. Cars ride on highways, but today's businesses are quickly shifting gear and using a super fast highway for collaborating and for managing their global presence. Thanks to the Internet, the economics of information is transforming the economics of things. Dell is probably a good example of the new business model that could not have been imagined in the 80's. The tearing down of artificial walls across countries and continents also happened in the last decade.

We are badly in need of a repeat research study of the kind done in this book, in the face of the new realities. Global companies run by global citizens serving a global market and using a global currency will probably happen sooner than we expect.

Like most business books this one is light on facts and heavy on speculation and lofty claims to theoretical significance. Nonetheless it is something of a classic and worth reading if you truly have nothing whatever to do with your time.

The book was written in 1990 and most of the research was done in the mid-80s. The author is full of ideas on how lean production will save and revolutionize the world auto industry, but I'm interested to find out what's happened since then. One thing I find most interesting is that the author is particularly charmed by Toyota's use of many platforms and their economic feasibility due to their lean production techniques. This was true in the late 80s and early 90s, but was completely done away with until their recent SUV explosion, for the very reason that it was cost ineffective and nobody was buying their unnecessarily diverse models. At any rate, a good book, especially for one who has never heard of lean production before (such as I). I would really enjoy another book that gets more technically specific.

Lean production has its disciples, as well as its detractors. The future of automobile production, and general supply chain management is centred in lean production philosophies and management techniques.

This book provides for the initiated, as well as the practitioner, a complete account of the major issues and problems faced with the introduction and management of lean systems.

The Japanese, particularly Toyota, were the originators of this approach to manufacturing. The Japanese success has been closely followed throughout the world, with the Koreans modelling the technique, and US companies such as the GM Saturn closely resembling lean systems.

The manufacturing and retail supply chain management in automobiles, but also in every other sector of economic activity, is closely following lean systems. This book is a very useful and immediate account of what this important production development and technique exactly is.

Great book. I am no expert in manufacturing techniques, but I found the book readable, almost like a novel. Gives a good insight into the car industry up to 1990, and I would love to see a second edition of this, given all the changes in the 90's.

The only downside I could find is that the book gets a little repetitive at the end.

I read this book while working for a major software firm--it was fascinating to me that Toyota could update their automobiles faster than we could bring out a new operating system.

This study of the world automotive industry by a group of MIT academics reaches the radical conclusion that the much vaunted Mercedes technicians are actually a throwback to the pre-industrial age, while Toyota is far ahead in costs and quality by building the automobiles correctly the first time. The lesson that it cost more to fix it than to build it correctly should be applicable to a lot of industries--not just manufacturing. The description of the marketing information system that Toyota uses was very enlightening. They involve the entire company in generating marketing feedback. Even dealer sales staff spend time working on the new product teams. Trust me, very few high-tech firms methodically collect feedback from their customers, and none have a system this comprehensive.

This is not just a book about lean production--this is guidance in understanding how your business operates and delivering good products that your customers want.

This is a great book if you are just taking an interest in the auto industry and would like to gain a simple understanding of lean vs. mass production. Outside of the fact that the author hangs on a few subjects, this book reads very fast.

This book introduces quite a few concepts, but unfortunately all of the examples are from the auto industry. If the reader can overcome this, and think of how the information would apply to their own industry, the book is of great value. The author's view of the future of the auto industry is quite interesting. I personally believe most cars will be bought over the Net as people generally hate dealing with car dealerships.

Good book, but if you're truly interested in this subject read Lean Thinking instead (same authors, better examples although many are also auto industry based).

In "The Machine That Changed the World", Womack, along with several other individuals, give an analysis of the Automobile Industry within global boundaries. This book was the summarization of a five year, five million dollar study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Analysis was provided for both foreign and domestic automobile manufacturers with an eye toward the future. This book spoke "globally" far earlier than it was hip to speak in such terms, analyzing such foreign automotive powers such as Toyota, with their Toyota Production System, perhaps the greatest example of Lean Manufacturing in the world. For anyone who would like to learn anything about the automobile industry in general, or even further, would like to learn about successful business practices, I highly recommend this text.

This book kept my interest. The lean production concept used in Japan automakers was clearly demonstrated as a superior way to American mass production. I can see how lean production can be transferred to other industries than auto manufacturing. The book also contained the history behind mass production and lean production, which was interesting. The insight into automakers in Japan, America, and Europe was also very enlightening.