Originally posted by XKontour98:
Good points. I don think much of the Lean Production priniples have made it into the auto industry yet and that this may in fact be the time for a conversion.
Its too bad that the US didnt listen to Richard Deming and start with Lean here versus having him go over to Japan where they would listen. The US and Japan would be totally different places.... 
Lean production was founded by the Japanese auto industry. The lean production concept was actually called the Toyota Production System in it's early stages. Six Sigma is another methodology to improve efficiencies that is similar in concept to lean production. Good reads on lean production and it's founding, and lean thinking:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060974176/qid=1130346279/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-7481656-7237426?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743249275/qid=1130346279/sr=8-3/ref=pd_bbs_3/103-7481656-7237426?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
I've read both and found them very informative in my research on lean production and lean management. Ford's Mexican plants, believe it or not, are some of the leanest vehicle manufacturing plants in the world (flame suit on! 
). This material is covered in the 1st book I linked above. Lean production wasn't around when the U.S. auto industry was born in the late 1800's and early 1900's. It didn't come about until the 1950's when it was founded by the guy from Toyota (don't have his name handy right here). Yes Deming did try and convince the U.S. manufacturers to utilize a different method of production when he learned it from the Japanese research he conducted, but it fell on deaf ears as the U.S. auto industry didn't believe the Japanese manufacturers would become nearly as competitive as they did in fact become. The big three all have lean production manufacturing in place today to varying extents, if they didn't, they'd be out of business already due to the inherent costliness of mass production in comparison. In this case competition from Japan forced the big three to learn this lesson. Hindsight is always 20/20, but it would have been nice to have seen the big three proactively move to a lean production model much sooner than they did. I believe unions partially impeded this process however, because as a whole they are change resistant entities.
Last edited by cjbaldw; 10/26/05 05:19 PM.
