In the Toyota library archives back in Toyota City there's a wonderful book called, Ford Methods in the Ford Shops published in 1915. It tells you everything you would ever need to know about lean from Highland Park. The most amazing book on industry ever written. You get that book out and every margin is annotated in Japanese by somebody a long time ago. I think they figured it out.
Highland Park is one of the poorest cities in the country.
Ford's taken this plant and done nothing with it. It's now off to a nonprofit that can't maintain it, which is a great shame, but the centennial is coming up so maybe they'll fix it. But if you go look at Highland Park, you all know about the moving track assembly line. What you don't know is that Ford for each module, and it was a modular product, lined everything up in process sequence. For example, for running boards, Ford had immediately adjacent to each other a blanker, a nipper, a washer, a cold-rolling thing, a paint booth, a drying booth, and an assembly area.