Page 236 - The Drucker Lectures

On Globalization [ 217

in this country have created four and a half times as many manu-
facturing jobs as we have exported.
Yes, the three domestic automobile companies are shrinking.
But practically none of the shrinkage of manufacturing jobs has
anything to do with product moving overseas. It has to do with
the fact that we are in the midst of a major industrial revolution
in manufacturing technology, as profound as the shift to mass
production in the early 1920s. When I first talked about it in
1969, I called it “flexible mass production.” The name for it is
now “lean manufacturing.”
In mass production, the rule was very simple. The mass pro-
duction people said to the engineers, “You give us your designs,
and we’ll figure out how to make them.” Now, you design so that
it can be made. And let me say that [pioneering quality consultant
W. Edwards] Deming—and he was a friend of mine—is totally
obsolete. Quality control was on the plant floor. The new quality
control is in the design stage. That is a radical change from the
mass production approach, in which engineers and manufacturing
people basically didn’t talk to each other, had infinite contempt
for each other. The engineers looked upon the mass production
people as “just the toolmakers,” and the mass production people
looked at the engineers as “those arrogant snobs.” Today, you be-
gin with certain manufacturing specs and the quality specs in the
design. And that is what underlies the greatest shrinkage of jobs.
Perhaps what is most amazing is that this tremendous change
had caused no social disruption in this country. You explain it
to me; I don’t understand it. We have had no social problem of
transition.
So, what are the greatest challenges ahead? I’m an old con-
sultant, and so my answer is colored by my experience. The most
difficult problem I have found with my clients, whether they are
profit or nonprofit, is to change their mindset. It’s not technol-
ogy; it’s not economic conditions. It is to change their mindset.