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Jdv. Put it under the must read section. Book is great for anyone who is interested in Project Management or just manufacturing and life lessons in all. This book teaches one so many different things that it's hard to say where to classify it under.
Captures more than just automotive, but ideas about livelihood, wages, government, health, and more. Ford was very forward thinking. Very good read - interesting ideas, thoughts, especially when you keep in mind that this was written decades ago. Mr.
Much of what is today attributed to Toyota was common practice at Ford factories in the 1920s. should buy this book and study history.
Deming's influence and contribution to the rise of post-war Japan cannot be denied. Henry Ford, American Military Training-Within-Industry and W.E.
Being employed in the car industry, finding a book like this is particularly useful as I can relate to a lot of what HF has written. People who have been reading Kaizen, JIT, the Toyota Way, etc.
One of HF's many enlightening observations: Big business is not money power, it is service power. What's really surprising is, he writes of things which are rational and based on common sense, but many don't seem to speak about or even practice in their daily work.
Ford was a world leader and pioneer in the field of mass producing automobiles, and companies like Volkswagen even used American mass production machinery.
If you would like to know who really started the Lean Journey look no further than Henry Ford
Not only is this a false assumption of employee behavior, it also only approaches plausibility for very large consumer product companies. Not because profits are bad does Ford present the service-motive, but because profits are give unreliable feedback. needs, his overconfidence in managing highly diverse businesses, and his inattention to downstream processes. There are different "uses" for this book - some I'd recommend, and others not. If you know the limitations of Today and Tomorrow, you then can reap great benefits by reading it as if it was written last week. It is insightful: An excellent alternative to the "profit-motive" of companies is presented: service-motive. Many of its ideas have yet to fully play out in the world of industry.
His opinion seems to ignore the buffering benefits of finance, as well as the gains created for society by letting financial tools open possibilities. The clues pop up with his ignorance of customer desires vs. The Toyota roots pop up in Ford's writing on waste, on cleanliness (5s), on continuous flow, and on timing. HOWEVER, YOU SHOULD READ THIS BOOK BECAUSE - It is current: Ford describes a organizational skill poorly understood and mostly ignored: coordination. It is historical: Not only does it provide the roots to Taiichi Ohno's - Toyota's - operations strategy, but it also gives clues to why Ford lost dominance.
I WOULD NOT recommend this book for it's insights on - Economics: Ford explains a classic industrial notion that a company paying employees more will increase its sales because employees will buy more company product. Ford sees the maintenance of service to the public as a more durable goal. Today's out-sourcing is more palatable knowing this skill. Finance: Ford describes how financial instruments are short-term narcotics and long-term ills. In the book, many processes are described that Ford says are all well known to other companies, but how the Ford Corporation made the processes interact was their power.
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