Industrial process
The drive towards greater flexibility and reduction of waste continues, writes Robert Wright
Within a year of Henry Ford’s introduction of the first modern assembly line at his factory near Detroit in 1913, the system had slashed the time to build a Model T Ford from 12.5 man hours to just 93 minutes.
A century later, industrial engineers are still trying to reduce the inflexibility in Ford’s system. The most eye-catching innovation is 3D printing, which could eventually make products as varied as Ford’s Model Ts were identical. But even now information technology is cutting waste and boosting flexibility in many forms of ...
Get The 50 Ideas that Shaped Business Today now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
