Book Review: The Machine That Changed the World by James P Womack, Daniel T Jones & Daniel Roos

Man and the Machine on the Roads

The Energy Industry today is on the cusp of change. This is an understatement and we all know, even as we experience the advent of smoke-less transportation vehicles that will soon dominate to move men and materials on the roads.

NOW is also the time to look back at the Century of Cars through the eyes of impeccable researchers by reading history of car manufacturers of the world from Europe to US to Japan, shifting from craft-producer to mass-manufacturer to Lean Producers and learn valuable lessons from history.

Sharing with you a short review of "How Lean Production Revolutionized the Global Car Wars", for teasing your thought-process, as Man-Managers who manufacture products for man's use!

Man is NOT a Machine:

The current-day scientists think that man is nothing but a bundle of bio-chemical algorithm. I beg to differ. Man is NOT just a machine. Though we appear to be caught into a daily/monthly/lifetime routine like machines, yet we can stop and re-wire ourselves at any stage in life! So-to-say, “Rediscover Yourself”, the tagline of our Learning Centre.

Where does this thinking connect with the current book in hand titled, “The Machine That Changed the World”? Frankly I don’t like the idea of mass-manufacturing. I am heavily influenced by my very early reading of the little book, “Small is Beautiful” by E F Schumacher, of the 1970s. Later I was captivated by the deep thought of our own Mahatma Gandhi that India lives and breathes in Its villages and we need to engage the hands and minds of man for achieving peace and prosperity.

When I saw this sleek book in the collection of my son who is specializing in Lean Manufacturing, I fondly thought of my Toyota Etios Car and the painstaking quality manufacture of the product that NEVER let me down on the road as an owner.  I decided to read about the revolution brought about by Japanese Car Makers in the auto world. Trust me. I hit upon a lucidly written chronicle of the Car Manufacturing Industry over the last century by a dedicated author-trio. My shifting of head quarters from Chennai to Trichy may have delayed reading but never deterred me from going back to the book.

The very packaging and language of the book is so pleasant and engaging that anyone with a critical thinking will lap it up. Replete with tables, graphs and logic, the book offers compelling reasons for not just optimizing any human activity, but underlines the cultural value of interdependent human societies in their everyday endeavors. 

Tracing as it does from the world-changing-way of producing an automobile by the good-old Ford, starkly differing from the then European car makers who hitherto chiseled every part, this research work sincerely compares the pros and cons every style without taking sides. But it ruthlessly points out to the human side of the enterprise and I love it.

Why this book? In the authors’ own words, “This book is an effort to ease the necessary transition from mass production to lean. By focusing on the global auto industry, we explain in simple, concrete terms what lean production is, where it came from, how it really works, and how it can spread to all corners of the globe for everyone’s mutual benefit.”

Remember the famous catchphrase of Henry Ford, the father of Mass-Manufacturing, offering his ‘Model T’ car to his customer? “You can have it in any color you want, as long as it is black!” This confidence bordering arrogance stemmed from the fact that in the early 1920s, more than half of the registered automobiles in world belonged to the Ford stable. While the idea of single-train making of the car was path-breaking in his times, the very monotony of manufacturing by creative human minds and hands was the reason for its death in the factory.

The authors convincingly argue that culture of co-working by Japanese in their effort, won over the world with Quality products leading to everyone’s stability and prosperity, in the entire value chain of assemblers, part suppliers, sellers and service personnel including the end customers. Lean Production in their opinion treats company as a community. 

A must read for the Manager-cum-Manufacturer in the shop-floor of ANY product. Not only you get to know the Japanese Terms viz., Kaizen, Kanban or Keiretsu in letter and spirit, but you also appreciate the work-value-system of the little country which lead the world of cars, in its pursuit for perfection.