The Early History of Lean Manufacturing
by Jim Cammarano, President

The early history of lean manufacturing is often overlooked or misstated in books and articles on the subject.  In fact it is longer and more interesting than usually presented.  It all began in 1765 with a French general Jean-Baptist Gribeauval coming to the realization that the use of interchangeable parts in the manufacture of firearms would be a great advantage in repairing the arms in the field.  Before that time, firearms were handcrafted piece by piece.  Even in firearms produced by the same gunsmith, the parts had to be hand fitted together. This resulted in firearms which had parts that were unique to that particular rifle or pistol. The French were not able to actualize the vision of interchangable parts, indeed no country was able to in large quantities for 100 years. In 1785, Thomas Jefferson was the American minister to France and heard of this new concept and reported it to his superiors.

Eli Whitney in 1798, in order to get a governmental firearms contract promised that his parts would be interchangable unlike his competitors.  His promises were newsworthy and spread the concept widely.  Unfortunately he delivered the firearms 9 years late and failed to produce arms with the much touted interchangable parts.

In 1813 Simeon North was contacted by the U.S. Government to manufacture pistols with interchangeable parts.  However, his substantial cost overruns and time delays led to his efforts being curtailed in 1816.  Out of the 20,000 pistols he contracted for, only a few hundred with interchangable parts were ever produced.

John H. Hall in 1815 was selected to produce 100 breech loading rifles with interchangeable parts for the ml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />U.S. government.  Unlike his processors he delivered the rifles in 1817, with completely interchangeable parts. This feat required him to design and manufacture new machine tools.  He also recognized the requirement for gages and fixtures in the manufacturing process to maintain strict conformity of his parts. In 1819 the government recognized the superiority of his firearms and granted him an additional 1,000 rifles.  Perhaps because of the monies lost with Eli Whitney and SImeon North, the government offered his salary and a commission of $1.00 per rifle.  The government would finance the manufacturing at the Harpers Ferry Armory.  Hall delivered the rifles in 1824 and the government audited them and determined they indeed had met their specifications.

Elisha Root worked at Colt Firearms and conceived and implemented a flexible assembly line process enabling them to produce several models of firearms with the same machinery.  They used rudimentary gages; however their parts were not interchangeable.  However the improvements made to the process and machinery resulted in the production over 200,000 units of the model 1860 revolver alone from 1860-1873.

In 1908-1913 Henry Ford went from producing 6,000 cars a year to 200,000 mastering both mass production, interchangeability of parts and many of the traits that we associate with Lean Manufacturing today including continuous thru put, short cycle times, high quality and costs that continued to decrease. Indeed from 1908-1916 Ford's process improvements allowed him to reduce the price of a model "T" from $850.00 to $360.00.  He is the true father of modern Lean Manufacturing.