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Steve Hooker Lean Articles
Lean
Manufacturing History prior to Toyota.
One
of the earliest examples of lean manufacture is that of
renaissance shipbuilding at the Arsenal in 16th century Venice. Over
3000 workers and apprentices were organized by the state to manufacture
boats that were part of the Venetians prosperity. The division of
labour from expert trades to support roles and training programmes
predated the industrial revolution in the 18th century.
War and
the military took a huge part in the development of Lean Manufacturing.
The 18th century saw the introduction of interchangeable parts for
weapons. Prior to this gunsmiths and craftsmen made individual “one
off” weapons, which either had to be repaired or discarded. In 1778
Honoré Blanc showed that muskets could be made from interchangeable
parts. This was built on by many others including Simeon North and John
Hall who produced complex machines having preformed castings that were
then machined. Other supporting technologies such as measuring gauges
were developed during the 19th century.
Simon Colt, famous
for his revolver published a patent on the “improvement to firearms” in
1836 . The Colt Patent Arms Company Hartford gun factory was the
prototype for America’s Industrial Revolution. It had lines
of
steam powered belt driven machines with individuals working on one
piece of it. Then these were taken to another part for assembly.
In
the early 19th century, the father of the great British engineer
Isambard Brunel, Marc Brunel introduced a new process for
making
rope pulley using machines and unskilled labour that was 10 times more
productive.
Chicago developed cattle disassembly lines that reduced
a butchers time of 3 hours to minutes. These lines had 120 workers that
killed, cut up and packed. The supply chain of cowboys and railways
brought in 10 million cattle a year. Henry Ford is believed to have
studied the lines and based his lines on the principles.
At the end
of the 19th century Sakichi Toyoda introduce the first automatic loom,
that continually developed over the next three decades. The lean
concept of Jidoka – or “automation with a human touch” was
born.
The looms stopped when there was a problem, so no defective parts and
many looms could be run by one operator.
Frederic Taylor developed
scientific management and many of the industrial engineering tools. He
replaced old habits and rules of thumb by analysis and trials. One
concept was understanding what a “first-class man” could do. His
thinking included “time and motion” studies, standardization of tools
and materials, method simplification, selection and training of
workers, measurement and benchmarking of performance. He also spoke of
his desire for management and labour to work together for their mutual
benefit.
Taylors thinking was taken to the next level by Henry
Ford. A great believer in continuous improvement the original 14 hours
for a car was reduced to 1 hour 30 mins. There was great level of
dedication in the lines, such that only one type of car could be
produced – in black. However it did allow him to reduce the price of a
car from $1,000 to $360. There were other issues with Fordism, the lack
of flexibility, demeaning job roles and harsh management of worker.
Other companies built on these weaknesses.
Article 1 Lean manufacturing