Lean Manufacturing Tools

The production system Henry Ford introduced at his Highland Park, Michigan, plant in 1913. The objective of flow production was to drastically reduce product throughput time and human effort through a series of innovations. These included consistently interchangeable parts so that cycle times could be stable for every job along an extended line, the line itself, the reconfiguration of part fabrication tasks so that machines were lined up in process sequence with parts flowing quickly and smoothly from machine to machine, and a  production control system insuring that the production rate in parts fabrication matched the consumption rate of parts in final assembly.