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The
Newsletter of Lean Manufacturing Strategy
May
2
8, 2006
www.strategosinc.com
"A
Bomber an Hour"
The
Origins of Lean Manufacturing
January,
1941-- War is only eleven months
away and the U.S. Army Air Corps is woefully unprepared. Consolidated
Aircraft Company has designed a huge four-engine bomber, the B-24
Liberator. The Army needs thousands of planes but Consolidated's
manufacturing is so chaotic they cannot even build one ship a day.
Charles
E. Sorensen, Vice President of Ford Motor Company and Edsel
Ford visit Consolidated to see if Ford Motor can build
components for the B-24 and thereby boost production. Sorensen
sees the Consolidated situation as hopeless.
Overnight
he sketches, layouts and plans the largest
industrial building ever built. A factory to produce not one
ship per day but "A bomber an hour".
The
resulting Willow Run Bomber Plant
eventually built as many as 25 ships per day. In our new web page
"A
Bomber an Hour", Sorensen tells in his own words how
he planned the layout and the production using principles that later
became the core of Lean Manufacturing.
By
1944 the Eighth Air Force in Europe was launching daily raids with more
than a thousand heavy bombers. An observer on the ground would wait
2-1/2 hours for the bomber stream to pass overhead. This campaign broke
the Luftwaffe, disrupted transport, starved the Wehrmacht of fuel and
paved the way for D-Day. Willow Run built 8800
of these heavy bombers.
I hope you enjoy Charlie
Sorensen's story. Sorensen was part of our "greatest generation"
and a pioneer of Lean Manufacturing.
All
the best from the Strategos
team.
Quarterman
Lee
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(c) 2004 Strategos, Inc.
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