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Rebirth of American Industry
We have a certain amount of sadness as we read of the bankruptcy of Delphi Corporation, and the losses and downsizing of General Motors (GM) and Ford. GM and Ford were the world leaders in automobile manufacturing, the richest companies in the world. What happened? Could it have been prevented? And have they, and we, learned a very important lesson to not repeat the mistakes from past? The very purpose of this book is to examine what were the principle things that did go wrong and to give modern managers specific guidelines to think about today to be internationally competitive.
304 pages, Paperback
First published December 15, 2005
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June 6, 2013
A few years ago, I was at a football game, when I asked my best friend, who is an industrial engineer "What is all of this 'Lean' stuff I hear about?" He spent the next few years talking at length through examples and slides and presentations and e-mails from Bill Waddell's blogs. They were nice, but I didn't really 'get it'. I am a design engineer and my views before hand were that I don't understand business and those business leaders and accounting gurus just think at a higher level than me.
Then my friend gave me his copy of this book. I figured I would probably never read it and give it back to him in a few months. I figured it was written for 'Industrial Engineer nerds' and would be above my head. One night, as I am about ready to go to bed, I pick it up and decide to look at chapter 1, so I can at least say I tried to read it. All I can say is WOW!!!! 3 chapters later, I look at the clock and decide I should go to bed, since it then way past my bedtime. I spent the next few days blowing through chapter after chapter (and staying up too late). The scales fell off of my eyes and suddenly I saw the absurdity of modern business thinking and the beauty of lean. Before, I thought Lean was something like the kanban cards I used to stock my kitchen (yes, my friend did teach me this) on a wider scale, but it is so much more.
After this book, Bill's blogs made perfect sense. I started spreading the word to those around me about the absurdity of overhead absorption, lowest landed piece costs, making machines run around the clock when you don't need that many parts, creating bogus factory efficiency numbers, building unwanted inventory at the end of the quarter, and other absurd practices I noticed around me. Not only did Bill teach me lean, I was able to explain it to others.
You can read reviews from lean manufacturing experts who read this book, but I hope you will take special notice when I tell you that I have ZERO background in manufacturing and was utterly clueless about all such things, and this book changed how I view manufacturing. It's not written for like-minded manufacturing gurus. It is written for all of us who just didn't get it.
Then my friend gave me his copy of this book. I figured I would probably never read it and give it back to him in a few months. I figured it was written for 'Industrial Engineer nerds' and would be above my head. One night, as I am about ready to go to bed, I pick it up and decide to look at chapter 1, so I can at least say I tried to read it. All I can say is WOW!!!! 3 chapters later, I look at the clock and decide I should go to bed, since it then way past my bedtime. I spent the next few days blowing through chapter after chapter (and staying up too late). The scales fell off of my eyes and suddenly I saw the absurdity of modern business thinking and the beauty of lean. Before, I thought Lean was something like the kanban cards I used to stock my kitchen (yes, my friend did teach me this) on a wider scale, but it is so much more.
After this book, Bill's blogs made perfect sense. I started spreading the word to those around me about the absurdity of overhead absorption, lowest landed piece costs, making machines run around the clock when you don't need that many parts, creating bogus factory efficiency numbers, building unwanted inventory at the end of the quarter, and other absurd practices I noticed around me. Not only did Bill teach me lean, I was able to explain it to others.
You can read reviews from lean manufacturing experts who read this book, but I hope you will take special notice when I tell you that I have ZERO background in manufacturing and was utterly clueless about all such things, and this book changed how I view manufacturing. It's not written for like-minded manufacturing gurus. It is written for all of us who just didn't get it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review