Teaching Note: Synopsis of "The Machine that changed the World" by George Noyes, 1997.
This synopsis summarizes/highlights key information from subject book. The book was written by three academic researchers. These individuals were part of a worldwide automobile industry-sponsored project. The intent of the project was to identify and benchmark non-proprietary production and management processes of the major commercial automobile industries in the world, in the mid-late 1980s. What these researchers discovered was that certain companies were using manufacturing and management practices that were vastly superior in overall results to conventional methods. They felt the differences were enough to constitute a new way of manufacturing, as the so-called "mass" production was different from the earlier "craft" production. They describe and explain these features, which in combination are referred to as "Lean" production. They also indicate the principles involved in "Lean production" are not confined to the automobile industry, and many other industries could benefit from adopting these principles and practices.
