Bill Waddell describes some of the significant contributions that Henry Ford brought to manufacturing and to management thinking. One of Ford's radical ideas was to pay his employees twice the average wage at the time and reduce the hourly shift by 20%. Contrary to what many Wall Street analysts would believe today, his bottom line improved significantly.
It is no wonder why Taichii Ohno was very impressed by Ford's teachings, and developed his ideas upon his contributions. Eli Goldratt, the founder of Theory of Constraints (ToC) wrote an article some years back where he also recognizes Ford's and Ohno's contributions on how to manage operations and gives his own point of view as well.
As a general rule, we shouldn't reinvent the wheel when tackling a subject, as there have always been significant contributions made by others. Newton's famous phrases captures that spirit beautifully, by saying "If I have seen further it is only because I'm standing on the shoulders of giants".
No comments:
Post a Comment