And The World Came To See: New Manufacturing System Designs and Industrial Revolutions

AND THE WORLD CAME TO SEE. When a new manufacturing system design (MSD) is developed by a company or a group of companies, the rest of the world comes to those factories to learn about the new system. In the last 200 years, three new factory designs have evolved, called the job shop, the flow shop and the lean shop. Each is based on a new system design — a functional design, a product flow design and a linked cell design. New factory designs lead to new industrial leaders and even new industrial revolutions (IR’s). Two appendixes are included: One outlines the implementation strategy for the lean shop and the other is a discussion of lean manufacturing from the viewpoint of K. Hitomi, Japanese professor of manufacturing systems engineering.