Manufacturing as a business is about 250 years old, and its central problems have not changed: making a product people want, making it right, keeping the plant full, and financing the whole through the cycle. The history in this section is told briefly and from the factory's side:
What the study covers
- 1Overview: the same four factors, every era
- 2A short history
- 3Strategy: the production equation as a planning tool
- 4Operator culture and business systems
- 5Capital allocation through the cycle
- 6Building a manufacturing company
- 7Other models: Germany's Mittelstand, Japan and China
- 8How to read founder and strategy claims
- 9Key numbers
- 10Landmark companies and cases
- 11Pitfalls
- 12How an expert thinks about it
- 13Glossary
Companies in this study
- Ford Motor
- General Motors
- General Electric
- NUMMI
- Toyota Production System
- Nucor
- Danaher
- Illinois Tool Works
- Tesla Manufacturing
- SpaceX
- Desktop Metal
- Lordstown Motors
- Flex
- Haier
- Komatsu
- Bethlehem Steel
- Keyence. For the supply-chain side of the same history (the container, Walmart, China's WTO entry) see Supply chain 24 History and Strategy; for energy's see Energy 21 History of Energy as a Business and Energy 23 Building and Running Energy Companies; for Tesla's factory story see Energy: Tesla.