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The Lower Cost of Premium Quality |
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Womack, Jones and Roos describe how Toyota achieves near 100% production yields, to seize the lower costs of premium quality. Going against the traditional Western wisdom, Toyota empowers every worker on an assembly line to stop the entire line when a problem arises that he or she cannot fix. But even though every worker can stop the line, today the line virtually never stops. This is because the production process has already been improved to such an extreme degree, and is constantly being refined even further.
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Today, Toyota plants have practically no rework area and perform almost no rework. Moreover, inspection is eliminated because quality is built into the car on the line. This is why high quality is cheaper to produce than lower quality, and as an added bonus, this high quality earns a premium price.
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Womack, James P., Jones, Daniel T., Roos, Daniel. The Machine that Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production. Harper Perennial. New York. 1990.
This book is the result of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's International Motor Vehicle Program -- the most comprehensive examination of the global auto industry ever undertaken. The authors use hard data and intimately informed insight to cut through the myths and misinformation which cloud the common understanding of good manufacturing practice.
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Even though this book focuses on the automobile industry, the model of Lean Production -- which is called "Japan's secret weapon" -- can be applied to any enterprise in any industry. Womack, Jones and Roos bring western readers up to speed with the Japanese concepts of Kaizen (continuous, incremental improvement) and Kanban (just-in-time production), claiming and proving that Lean Production is a superior method for manufacturing excellence.
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