When James Womack Daniel Jones and Daniel Roos wrote THE MACHINE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD in 1990 Japanese automakers and Toyota in particular were making a strong showing by applying the principles of lean production. However the full power of lean principles was unproven and they had not been applied outside of the auto industry. Today the power of lean production has been conclusively proved by Toyotas unparalleled success and the concepts have been widely applied in many industries. Based on MITs pioneering global study of industrial competition THE MACHINE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD offers a groundbreaking analysis of the entire lean business system including product development supplier management sales service and production - an analysis even more relevant today as GM and Ford struggle to survive and a wide range of British abd American companies embrace lean production. A new Foreword by the authors brings the story up to date and details how their predictions were right. As a result this reissue of a classic is as insightful and instructive today as when it was first published.
