The Machine That Changed the World : The Story of Lean Production-- Toyota's Secret Weapon in the Global Car Wars That Is Now Revolutionizing World Industry

This book contains all the seeds of the Lean Production Ideas. A must for the serious Lean Practitioner. This is the most influential book on the subject. However it needs a great deal of study and deep understanding but it's worth it for the insight and Lean foundations it provides.

When The Machine That Changed the World was first published in 1990, Toyota was half the size of General Motors. Today Toyota is passing GM as the world's largest auto maker and is the most consistently successful global enterprise of the past fifty years. This management classic was the first book to reveal Toyota's lean production system that is the basis for its enduring success.

Now reissued with a new Foreword and Afterword, Machine contrasts two fundamentally different business systems — lean versus mass, two very different ways of thinking about how humans work together to create value. Based on the largest and most thorough study ever undertaken of any industry — MIT's five-year, fourteen-country International Motor Vehicle Program — this book describes the entire managerial system of lean production.

Nearly twenty years ago, Womack, Jones, and Roos provided a comprehensive description of the entire lean system. They exhaustively documented its advantages over the mass production model pioneered by General Motors and predicted that lean production would eventually triumph. Indeed, they argued that it would triumph not just in manufacturing but in every value-creating activity from health care to retail to distribution.

Today The Machine That Changed the World provides enduring and essential guidance to managers and leaders in every industry seeking to transform traditional enterprises into exemplars of lean success.

The classic, nationally bestselling book that first articulated the principles of lean production, with a new foreword and afterword by the authors.When The Machine That Changed the World was first published in 1990, Toyota was half the size of General Motors. Twenty years later Toyota passed GM as the world's largest auto maker. This management classic was the first book to reveal Toyota's lean production system that is the basis for its enduring success. Authors Womack, Jones, and Roos provided a comprehensive description of the entire lean system. They exhaustively documented its advantages over the mass production model pioneered by General Motors and predicted that lean production would eventually triumph. Indeed, they argued that it would triumph not just in manufacturing but in every value-creating activity from health care to retail to distribution. Today The Machine That Changed the World provides enduring and essential guidance to managers and leaders in every industry seeking to transform traditional enterprises into exemplars of lean success. Provides an in-depth analysis of the role lean production has played in Toyota’s success. Traces the evolution of lean production and discusses how it works in factory operations, product development, supply-system coordination, customer relations, and management. Examines how lean production is spreading across the world and to other industries, and considers the barriers that are preventing companies from becoming lean. Revised with a new foreword and afterword How Japan's secret weapon in the global auto wars will revolutionize western industry