Dynamic Manufacturing

This was and is one the best books ever written. While I was lost on the last couple chapters - the rest was so formulative. One has to remeber when this book was written - Fast product development and feature releases were 2-5 years. These guys revolutionized the working world during the Peters era. Where Tom Peter's reported and motivated - these guys showed you how to do it. I used this as my roadmap at the old Western Electric from 1989-1999. This is the genesis to the 5th discipline and almost all books today on concurrent engineering and Rapid Prototype Development (whether they admit it or not). A timeless classic that should be in every great library.

Dynamic Manufacturing is one of the earlier Clark/Wheelwright books on manufacturing and product development (the title is not suggesting it also covers product development, but it does). In my opinion, the book was way ahead of it's time and still, 20 years after it's publication, up-to-date and relevant and could have been written today! The book consists of a couple of different parts, although they are not marked like that in the book itself (wonder why...): - History (chapter 1) - Metrics and organizational (chapter 2-5) - Manufacturing improvements (chapter 6-9) - Product Development (chapter 10-11) - Next steps (chapter 12) The history part alone is worth the book. It goes over the history of manufacturing in the US and in the world and shows that in 1988 the US manufacturing was in serious trouble, but that these troubles are similar to what the UK manufacturing went through in the beginning of the century. It has some pretty convincing data that something needed to be done. It would be nice to get an update related to this chapter alone. The second part talks about investment planning and GAAP accounting practices and how they traditionally lead to the wrong investments and that being one of the key reasons for the lagging of the manufacturing industry. The next chapter talks about organizing manufacturing, problems and different models of solving that. The last chapter talks about measuring the manufacturing productivity and provides one productivity metric for doing so. The thirds part describes the more concrete improvement to be done in the manufacturing. This part describes what is now known as lean manufacturing. In that sense, the book was ahead of its time since at the time the book was written, lean was still fairly unknown and new. It does great on summarizing some of the lean techniques and most importantly, ends with a chapter on people and continuous improvements. The product development part is what later turned in their product development book "Revolutionizing product development". It introduces concepts like the "product funnel" and talks a lot about concurrent engineering. At the time the book was written, these concepts were very new and modern and this was one of the earlier books related to them, as far as I know. As any book promoting new ideas, the last part talks about how to make the change happen. How to make the switch in mindset and where to start. I thoroughly enjoyed Dynamic Manufacturing. Even though 20 years old, it still is relevant today. It was well written. Recommended to read, even in 2008.

The book is extremely refreshing and useful in terms of its different perspective from the conventional manufacturing management assumptions and theories, which still influence the America's management practices today. The book explores key manufacturing infrastructure issues such as capital budgeting, organization structure and performance measurement and demonstrates how these can affect, positively or negatively, the performance of the manufacturing companies in pursuing it sustainable competitive advantage over its competitors. The book is well structured and the arguments are very consistent with one another. In analyzing different elements leading to a superior manufacturing organization,the importance of learning and adaptation to change are emphasized, while the difficulties of creating the new infrastructure that a company may encounter and the key role that management can play are also emphasized. The points the authors propose are impressive using reliable case studies. For example, the case histories of the three presentative investment decisions that illustrate the problems with the modern capital budgeting paradigm are instrumental for better understanding. The calculations of total factor poductivity (TFP) for two contrasting products illustrate the TFP performance easurement technique convincingly. The tables and figures in each chapter, provided as further illustrations, also aid in generating neat and explicit explanations. The author's treatment is complete since the book provides a great deal of information and shows today's managers why it is necessary and how to implement the fundamental changes if they want to create a world-class organization that builds a competitive advantage through manufacturing excellence. It is very comprehensive in addressing issues associated with creating and managing a dynamic, learning manufacturing organization at the corporation level and at the factory level. However, not all the technical details are provided in the sense that the book is more a "know-why" than "know-how" guidance. The book is directed at managers throughout a manufacturing company, not just the management of the manufacturing function. In my opinion, capital investors, top management, manufacturing managers, project managers, industrial engineers, design engineers, and any other ambitious engineers in manufacturing companies should read this book carefully and keep in mind some insights and principles that the authors address in the book. As advocated by the authors, "learning is the bottom line"....