The Rebirth of American Industry

We have a certain amount of sadness as we read of the bankruptcy of Delphi Corporation, and the losses and downsizing of General Motors and Ford. GM and Ford were the world leaders in automobile manufacturing, the richest companies in the world. What happened? Could it have been prevented? And have they, and we, learned a very important lesson to not repeat the mistakes from the past? The very purpose of this book is to examine what were the principle things that did go wrong and to give modern managers specific guidelines to think about today to be internationally competitive.

 

Rebirth of American Industry: A Study of Lean Management. The book traces the evolution of manufacturing management along two lines: That pioneered by Henry Ford, then furthered by Toyota to its modern level of success; versus that originated by Alfred Sloan and others at General Motors still in practice in most American companies today. The latter system of management proves to be the underlying cause of the current failure of American manufacturing to compete.