Principles of Mass and Flow Production - Paperback

by Frank G. Woollard (Author), Bob Emiliani (With)

Long before Toyota, a British mechanical engineer named Frank George Woollard built a fully functioning flow production system - and then history overlooked him. It is a missing chapter in the history of progressive management.

Originally published in 1954, Principles of Mass and Flow Production lays out Woollard's 18 basic principles of flow, drawn from his work at Morris Motors Ltd., where between 1923 and 1925 he achieved high-volume automobile engine flow production supported by pioneering automatic transfer machinery.

His ideas - cycle time, end-to-end flow from sales through suppliers, visual management, and respect for people - closely anticipate Toyota's management practices.

This 55th Anniversary Special Reprint Edition includes Woollard's rare 1925 paper Some Notes on British Methods of Continuous Production, along with a new preface, foreword, introduction, and biography by Bob Emiliani, Ph.D.,

The book also examines the likely influence of Woollard's work on Kiichiro Toyoda and the early development of Toyota's production system. This book will be of interest to progressive management practitioners and management historians.