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The Machine That Changed the World cover art

The Machine That Changed the World

Written by: James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, Daniel Roos
Narrated by: Fred Sanders
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Publisher's Summary

The classic, nationally best-selling book that first articulated the principles of lean production, with a new foreword and afterword by the authors.

When The Machine That Changed the World was first published in 1990, Toyota was half the size of General Motors. Twenty years later Toyota passed GM as the world’s largest auto maker. This management classic was the first book to reveal Toyota’s lean production system that is the basis for its enduring success.

Authors Womack, Jones, and Roos provided a comprehensive description of the entire lean system. They exhaustively documented its advantages over the mass production model pioneered by General Motors and predicted that lean production would eventually triumph. Indeed, they argued that it would triumph not just in manufacturing but in every value-creating activity from health care to retail to distribution.

Today The Machine That Changed the World provides enduring and essential guidance to managers and leaders in every industry seeking to transform traditional enterprises into exemplars of lean success.

©2007 Daniel T. Jones, Daniel Roos, James P. Womack (P)2018 Simon & Schuster Audio
Management & Leadership International Engineering Machine World
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Profile Image for John C

Brilliant but a little dated

A classic of business writing, with a huge amount of research behind it. The reader should aware that the book was written 30 years ago and while it certainly anticipates the North American auto industry's grave problems since 2008, doesn't deal with them directly.

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Profile Image for michael

More about car manufacturing than lean manufacturing principals.

The book seemed like it was more about a comparison between lean and mass production.

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