Product Description

Henry Ford
Today and Tomorrow
Commemorative Edition of Ford's 1926 Classic

Originally published in 1926, Today and Tomorrow, written by the world's most famous automaker, Henry Ford, reveals the thinking that changed industry forever.

Ford's ideas have never stopped having an impact. Taiichi Ohno, the creator of the Just-In-Time (JIT) manufacturing system, freely acknowledges that a key stimulus to JIT was his close reading of Ford. Today these same ideas have re-emerged to revitalize industry around the world.

Today and Tomorrow chronicles Ford's progressive vision. It was his credo of using low-cost, high-quality production to win market share that inspired the Japanese to do the same. In these 24 chapters, Ford discusses topics that are just as relevant today as they were in 1926, at the height of Henry Ford's success:

· Money, power, and big business
· Work standards, time, and motion
· Learning from waste
· Wages, hours, and employee motivation
· The power of education

Today, Henry Ford's ideas warrant a second look. He doubled wages, cut the price of a car in half, and produced over 2 million units a year. Time has not diminished the impact of his business philosophy, or his profound influence on worldwide industry. You will be enlightened by what you read and intrigued by the words of this colorful and remarkable man.

This updated printing of Today and Tomorrow features a new introduction by James J. Padilla, Group Vice President North America for Ford Motor Company. It also includes an enhanced selection of photos illustrating the processes and facilities Ford covers in the text as well as an updated chronology of the Ford Motor Company.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #58725 in Books
• Published on: 1988-12-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 286 pages

Customer Reviews

The book that inspired Taiichi Ohno
This is an outstanding book for those folks in manufacturing who are starting out on their "Lean" journey. The book teaches the uninitiated an original thinker's way of recognizing "waste" in manufacturing, and often, how to deal with that waste. Taiichi Ohno took a "shipload" of this book with him to Japan in the '50s and made sure that every Toyota engineer read the book. The rest is history as to how Toyota packaged this information for the rest of the world, including the United States, in its now famous "7 wastes of manufacturing." You will enjoy the book and learn what an outstanding visionary Henry Ford really was.

A Visionary in Many Arenas
This is the book that made me appreciate Mr Ford's accomplishments and how he changed the world of business, particularly manufacturing. He was a leader and true visionary in many aspects of business, which are chronicled herein, and many of the roots of Lean are documented in this text. Aside from kanban and `jelly beans', he didn't miss much of the fundamentals of what we see as Lean.

The impacts of Ford's principles on business, the economy, social ramifications, and more are profound. The ideas, thought processes, and applications are expressed well and we can learn from these today. Too bad much of the rest of American business lost sight of Ford's techniques as they became enamored with scientific formulae like EOQ (economic order quantities) without questioning the assumptions.

An historical document of our contemporary
There are different "uses" for this book - some I'd recommend, and others not.
I WOULD NOT recommend this book for it's insights on -
Economics: Ford explains a classic industrial notion that a company paying employees more will increase its sales because employees will buy more company product. Not only is this a false assumption of employee behavior, it also only approaches plausibility for very large consumer product companies.
Finance: Ford describes how financial instruments are short-term narcotics and long-term ills. His opinion seems to ignore the buffering benefits of finance, as well as the gains created for society by letting financial tools open possibilities.

HOWEVER, YOU SHOULD READ THIS BOOK BECAUSE -

It is current: Ford describes a organizational skill poorly understood and mostly ignored: coordination. In the book, many processes are described that Ford says are all well known to other companies, but how the Ford Corporation made the processes interact was their power. Today's out-sourcing is more palatable knowing this skill.
It is insightful: An excellent alternative to the "profit-motive" of companies is presented: service-motive. Not because profits are bad does Ford present the service-motive, but because profits are give unreliable feedback. Ford sees the maintenance of service to the public as a more durable goal.
It is historical: Not only does it provide the roots to Taiichi Ohno's - Toyota's - operations strategy, but it also gives clues to why Ford lost dominance. The Toyota roots pop up in Ford's writing on waste, on cleanliness (5s), on continuous flow, and on timing. The clues pop up with his ignorance of customer desires vs. needs, his overconfidence in managing highly diverse businesses, and his inattention to downstream processes.

If you know the limitations of Today and Tomorrow, you then can reap great benefits by reading it as if it was written last week. Many of its ideas have yet to fully play out in the world of industry.