The Machine that Changed the World: Hands on!

These days i'm reading on how Toyota, essentially Japanese firm, revolutionized the production methodology from a book called The Machine that Changed the World. Toyota's innovation was named as Lean Production by the book written back in 1990, 21 years from now. Previously, mass production was pursued in US and Europe, invented by Henry Ford, in which standard products were produced in a very high volume, leaving little or no room for customization. Before that, as we all know, there was craft production, in which there were highly skilled masters who would make customized products.

Lean production takes the qualities of both outdated methodologies, and eliminates their negativity. The book gives the history and characteristics of all 3 ways of production, and step by step shows how lean developed in Japan and was successfully implemented in US as well. The 2nd book in the series, Lean Thinking, as per my professor, is more important that the one i'm reading.

What has all of this got to do with me? I'm excited about it for i'm going to visit tomorrow a generator producing factory of a mechanical engineering student, who's a friend of my senior. I feel fetting into the shows of Ohno and Toyoda, Toyota guys who innovated lean... i got to make a checklist of lean tools that we need to implement there, study the plant, share it with professors and come up with improvements....