Customer Reviews

Today and Tomorrow - Special Edition of Ford's 1926 Classic

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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.

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.

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.

Book is great for anyone who is interested in Project Management or just manufacturing and life lessons in all. This book teaches one so many different things that it's hard to say where to classify it under. Put it under the must read section. Jdv.

Very good read - interesting ideas, thoughts, especially when you keep in mind that this was written decades ago. Mr. Ford was very forward thinking. Captures more than just automotive, but ideas about livelihood, wages, government, health, and more.

Being employed in the car industry, finding a book like this is particularly useful as I can relate to a lot of what HF has written. What's really surprising is, he writes of things which are rational and based on common sense, but many don't seem to speak about or even practice in their daily work! Much of what is today attributed to Toyota was common practice at Ford factories in the 1920s! Ford was a world leader and pioneer in the field of mass producing automobiles, and companies like Volkswagen even used American mass production machinery. People who have been reading Kaizen, JIT, the Toyota Way, etc. should buy this book and study history. Henry Ford, American Military Training-Within-Industry and W.E. Deming's influence and contribution to the rise of post-war Japan cannot be denied. One of HF's many enlightening observations: Big business is not money power, it is service power!

If you would like to know who really started the Lean Journey look no further than Henry Ford