THE MACHINE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD summary

Chapter 1: From the horseless carriage

The machine that changed the world by James Womack, Daniel Jones, and Daniel Roos. What's in it for me? Learn how Toyota's lean production system revolutionized manufacturing. The car in front is a Toyota.

Do you remember this famous ad slogan from the 1990s? For decades, Japanese car manufacturer Toyota has maintained its solid reputation for innovation and quality. The company's cars sell well worldwide, being valued for both their efficiency and reliability. A cornerstone of its successful global business is Toyota's legendary production system, called TPS, more commonly known as lean production.

In fact, this production method became so successful that it has since been adopted in other industries, such as design, programming, and startup management. This summary gives you the inside scoop on how lean production came to be and explains in detail how this system helped skyrocket Toyota to global success. Chapter 1: From the horseless carriage to the modern assembly line, the automobile industry has evolved. The automobile industry has grown tremendously since the early days of the horseless carriage, first patented by Carl Benz in 1886.

There's good reason the automobile industry is often called the industry of industries. In 2014 alone, some 90 million cars and commercial vehicles were produced. The automobile industry as a whole represents the world's largest manufacturing activity. Let's look at how this came to be.

In its early days, the auto industry was defined by craft production, meaning that highly skilled engineers and manufacturers tailored each individual car to a customer's taste. This was slow and expensive. Thus, few people could afford cars and only some 1,000 vehicles were produced yearly. Only luxury cars are produced via craft production today.

In general, the industry has moved to mass production. Inspired by Henry Ford, this change came about in the early 20th century. Henry Ford simply sought to produce more cars in less time. He realized he could achieve this by designing cars with the same interchangeable parts and producing the parts separately, instead of working on a whole car at once.

The development of the assembly line further accelerated the manufacturing process. An early assembly line was a moving belt with workers stationed at different spots along it. Each worker performed one or two simple tasks, over and over again. These basic tasks didn't require highly specialized skills, and in fact, many assembly line workers were immigrants who spoke little English.

The automatization of the production process meant that cars were no longer customized or were customized very little, but instead offered a great advantage. Any person could drive or even repair them just by following a standard 150-page manual.

Chapter 2: Assembly line production grew

Assembly line production grew in the US and in Europe, but the process wasn't foolproof. With the innovation of mass production, a flood of cheaply produced American cars were sold worldwide. By the early 1930s, some 32 million vehicles were in use globally, and 90% of those were American. Most of these vehicles were made by three leading US companies, known as the Big Three: Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors.

Henry Ford's assembly line process dominated the automobile industry for about 50 years, but this gradually changed as European companies began to compete, Germany's Volkswagen, France's Renault, and Italy's Fiat. As the European companies made inroads, Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors began to lose their leadership positions, and even the assembly line production process grew outdated. The problem was that mass production followed strict rules and offered little reward to workers who performed the line's boring, repetitive tasks. As you might expect, employment turnover was high.

An assembly line was also practically unstoppable, as each process depended on the next, and time was always tight. So if a worker found a problem, he might not report it, as it was simpler to just send the defective part on down the line. Moreover, an assembly line manager's performance was measured by the number of cars the line produced. So workers were essentially incentivized to ignore flaws to meet overall quotas.

Mistakes were caught and repaired in a space called the rework area once a car had come off the assembly line. Sometimes an entire vehicle would have been taken apart and rebuilt, a costly and tedious process that caused delays. With so many moving parts to examine, even rework area employees couldn't catch every problem, and many defective cars were sold as a result.