My Years With General Motors

Wilke’s secret to success? A culture of operational excellence—built on lean manufacturing, statistical process control, the theory of constraints, and purpose-built software.‡ Lean manufacturing, of course, came from the Toyota Way, the fusion of Deming’s and Japan’s “East meets West” ideas and practices. Statistical process control, too, comes st

As Ed worked throughout the eighties, he continually refined his ideas and teachings around Profound Knowledge. Those six management principles he originally taught at Nashua soon morphed into his now-famous “14 Points for Management,” which he outlines in Out of the Crisis.

Today historians describe the part the Ford car played in the development of that era and in transforming American life. We see that now. But we didn’t see it then; we weren’t as smart as we have been credited with being. All that we were trying to do was to develop the Ford car. The achievement came first. Then came logical expression of its princ

The pattern for pricing Ford cars was based on apparent comparative prices for 1909 and 1910: the greater the volume the lower the price. Hawkins and his people brought us our first challenging volume. That challenge had to be met by faster production. True, it was the car that made the salesmen, but it was the sales organization that sparked the g