The key to profits is on the shop floor. Again, many executives will disagree with this statement, on the grounds, for example, that getting a product to market first is more important than making it cheaply. Their mistake is to assume that it doesn't matter how the shop floor works when your objective is fast time to market for new products. As much care is needed to set up a factory that will whisk through new products effectively as to reduce the production costs of a mature product. Waste does not usually take the form of big lumps that can be trimmed away, but rather is marbled through the manufacturing process, and can only be eliminated by paying attention to what happens at every step.
All manufacturing is repetitive.
This too is controversial. But when we dig into the process we find that all units are identical until the last operation and customized only then. In all manufacturing operations, there is some form of repetitiveness which may not be obvious but must be sought out in process design. Being flexible, or agile, means being able to make whatever customers want, but it does not require the manufacturer to be actually able to make what anybody might order. It is sufficient to make what customers actually do order.