Conditions for survival in the manufacturing industry in VUCA era
Satoru Murakami
CEO Goal-System consultants Inc.,
Three manufacturing giants,Henry Ford, Taiichi Ohno, and Eliyahu Goldratt.-3 Ford Synchronous Production
Hello, this is Satoru Murakami from Goal System Consulting.
Last time, GM (General Motors)'s "quantity paradigm" and Ford and Toyota's "quantity paradigm" that the history of manufacturing in the 20th century was based on two different ideas, "quantity" and "flow".
Since the Industrial Revolution in England in the mid-18th century, manufacturing technology has developed rapidly. It is an operation management technology that is a division of labor technology that manages how to make things and controls the flow, which is the unique technology that created the steam engine that enabled mass production and supported it. Improve the "flow" of manufacturing in order to earn cash. Operations management has evolved to achieve this goal, but it is extremely interesting to see this activity on the time axis of changes in the environment.
It is well known that Toyota Production System learned from Ford's synchronous production system and aimed to break away from the mass production paradigm, Then, the aim of TOC was to smoothly carry out high-mix low-volume production, which TPS is not good at. This method was established by thoroughly researching TPS in order to deal with the "large variation (unstable)" of the production environment. That's why TOC inherits Ford's DNA.
From here, let's take a look at the approaches of Henry Ford, Taiichi Ohno, and Eliyahu Goldratt from the perspective of the "paradigm of flow", while tracing the history of changes in the manufacturing environment.
Henry Ford (1863-1947) was the founder of the automobile company Ford Motor Company and developed the technology to mass-produce industrial products by the line production method. Ford did not invent the car, but developed and produced the T-type Ford, a car that many middle-class people can afford. In that sense, if Karl Benz of Germany, who invented the car, is the "Father", then Henry Ford is the "Mother".
The T-type Ford has revolutionized industry and transportation with a cumulative total of more than 15 million units produced. He is also the founder of "Fordism", which maintains high wages for workers while mass-producing cheap products.
The mechanism built by Ford, the so-called Ford system, made a great contribution to industry in the 20th century through standardization and the establishment of a division of labor system. The production method of the T-type Ford, which was built with the concept of synchronous mass production, is characteristic, and it is no exaggeration to say that it is the culmination of the Industrial Revolution, achieving extremely high productivity.
Through a belt conveyor that determines the pace and a storage space (WIP area) that regulates the amount of work in progress, production is synchronized, and the work of the operator (worker) is broken down into short cycle work of several tens of seconds. By dividing the labor, we realized integrated production of "two days from putting iron ore in the blast furnace until the finished vehicle comes out", which brought about a tremendous improvement in productivity.
Another revolutionary event was the establishment of component compatibility by making full use of dedicated machines and significantly improving machining accuracy. At this time, a mechanism was established in which one of part can be attached to any products, which is now commonplace but indispensable for mass production. This Ford idea can be said to be the origin of TPS (lean production) in terms of thorough flow and elimination of waste. However, this synchronous production method was a dedicated line for only one T-type Ford model.
By making only one model, operators who were placed in sync with the speed of the conveyor flow could complete the work with zero waiting and did not have to have extra work in process.
This makes the Ford production method an epoch-making production method that produces "as much as possible" and "as fast as possible". As a result, Ford continued to make only "Black T-type Ford" for 18 years and recorded an astonishing long-selling 15 million units. It was sold at an incredible price of $ 280 in 1909, starting at $ 1,000, opening up a motorized society where anyone can own a private car.
The basis of Ford's thinking was the denial of partial efficiency (Local Efficiency) that "all workers and machinery must always be busy". As a result of abolishing traditional management methods that focus on individual volume, Ford's per-worker throughput and wages at the time were higher than any other manufacturing industry.
Ford's production method is often regarded as a mass production method that denies humanity, as Charles Chaplin ridiculed in "Modern Times", but Ford is often regarded as a mass production method in his book "Handle of Straw". Regarding the idea of flow, he says that having no inventory has brought significant benefits to Ford's management.
Next time, I would like to introduce Mr. Taiichi Ohno, who built the Toyota Production System.
