Book Review - The Machine that Changed the World

The Machine that Changed the World

Womack J, Jones D, Roos D

Free Press (1990)

The story of lean production – Toyota’s secret weapon in the global car wars that is revolutionizing world industry

If, like me, you are only just beginning your journey in understanding lean then this book is a great place to start. It sets out the background for the emergence and development of lean production, moving away from mass production that dominated for most of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, and which evolved from craft production before that. This book has been called previously a “management classic”, explaining and stimulating “world changing transformation in management thinking”.

This book does not set out to examine how lean succeeds in Japan because of its society’s unique features. These are considered to be of secondary importance. It is not a book about what is right with Japan and wrong with the rest of the world, but rather what is right with lean production.

Whilst the book focusses on car production it is not difficult to see how the principles of lean could be applied to service industries as well. The story this book tells is about so much more than just the technicalities of a method of production. It looks in depth at two very different ways of thinking and how humans work together. There are many colourful examples throughout the book about how Americans tried to understand what the Japanese were doing in their factories, and jumped to hasty conclusions that bore no resemblance to what actually went on. This is because they lacked a more fundamental understanding of the lean system of work: It is one thing to use the tools from the “lean toolkit” to effect some change, but without addressing the system as a whole (and the resulting culture) then continuous improvement will not thrive.

Another point that struck me when reading this was how slow the rest of the world was to react to such a radical change in production method, even when the results were plain to see. Toyota began using lean in earnest in the 1950’s-60’s, with other Japanese firms following suit shortly after (to varying degrees of success). The US and Europe followed much later in the 1990’s-2000’s, and consequently are playing catch up. The Japanese companies’ success with lean production may be due to the establishment of vertical and horizontal keiretsu – groups of companies with common business interests, such as banks, investors and suppliers. Machine makes reference to these as if they were infallible – one of the keys to success - but the Japanese recession in the early 1990’s showed that these conglomerates were not invincible after all as many collapsed, leaving a big dent in Japanese production.

Machine paved the way for a whole industry of books to be written on lean, since its initial publication in 1990. One of my most burning questions is what happened to lean production in the intervening two decades?  Thankfully, there is an Afterword that attempts to answer that very question. The reader is also directed to two other books written since for more information – Lean Thinking (1996) and Lean Solutions (2005).

So what else have I learned from reading this book? In short – I know I will never buy another GM or Ford motor car again!