The Importance of Manufacturing

As some economists observe, manufacturing is the wealth-producing sector of the economy, while the service sector tends to consume wealth.  Just what is manufacturing?  Generally speaking, it is an industrial production transforming raw materials into finished goods for sale in a large scale.

There are many different categories of manufacturing including: construction, electronics, engineering, energy, industrial, plastics, and textile to name a few.  There are also numerous manufacturing systems such as:  craft, English, American Soviet Collectivism, and lean manufacturing among others.  What is lean manufacturing?  An interesting subject.

Lean manufacturing is distinguished by the endless pursuit of the elimination of waste.  This is based on a common sense theory gleaned back from the days of Benjamin Franklin.  A lean manufacturer is one producing goods through the elimination of waste, while implementing flow.  Lean manufacturing uses a minimum amount of manpower, materials, money, and machines to get the job done when promised.  It was Henry Ford who first used lean manufacturing in a large scale; continuing his focus on waste as he developed his mass assembly manufacturing system.  The financial and industrial world was startled by Ford’s efficiency, success, and results, which included an increase of quality, substantial increase of workers’ pay, and repeated cost reduction to the consumer.  Ford’s mass production system, though, hadn’t incorporated the idea of, “pull production,” thereby suffering from over-production.  Along came Taiichi Ohno of Toyota who, after World War II, developed the Pull Production System; building from orders received rather than from target driven projected sales, or Push Production.  Lean manufacturing is continuing to develop around the Toyota Production System (TPS).