Hi! Managers: Global Pioneers of process improvement

The history of process improvement is more interesting than you might think, and it also reveals some of the cornerstones of modern process-improvement practices.
When did process improvement begin? Human beings have been evolving and adapting since time began so we could argue that we have been practising it since the birth of humanity. However, true process improvement began when our ancestors no longer thought about the end product (one flint arrowhead) but the process of producing those (many flint arrowheads).
For that reason, industrialisation was the perfect fermenting pot for process improvement. We can trace its modern-day roots back to the industrial revolution that occurred in the years around 1750 to 1850. This was the start of machine-based manufacturing and spurred incredible innovation as people looked to increase efficiency, which is a key, although not exclusive, focus of process improvement.
A trademark of process improvement is that wherever it goes, growth follows. And so it was at that time; in the two centuries following 1800, the world’s average per capita income increased over 10-fold, while the world’s population increased over six-fold.
The textile and manufacturing industries in particular spurred the many early pioneers of process improvement. Here are a tiny noteworthy handful of them.
The beginning was basic: simplification and standardisation. Eli Whitney was the inventor of the cotton gin. His invention made upland short cotton into a profitable crop, which unfortunately had the effect of strengthening the economic foundation of slavery in the South of the United States which had been previously been in decline. Then, even more ironically, his advocacy of “interchangeable parts”, or the standardisation of common parts, revolutionised the musket-making manufacturing industry, and contributed greatly to the North’s victory in the Civil War against the South.
Another significant evolution of process improvement was pioneered by Frederick Winslow Taylor, who was a mechanical engineer. Whilst working as a labourer and machinist, Taylor observed that his colleagues were not working either themselves or their machines to their optimum. In order to determine how much work should properly be expected he began to analyse the productivity of both the men and the machines. His focus on the human component of production eventually became known as scientific management, while his focus on the machine component led to metal-cutting and materials innovations.
Alive during the same time was another advocate of scientific management, Frank Bunker Gilbreth, who was the pioneer of motion study. With his wife Lillian Evelyn Gilbreth, also a process-improvement pioneer, he had 12 children and was the real-life figure depicted in the movie “Cheaper by the Dozen”. He reportedly often used his children in his productivity experiments, for good reason one would understand.
In World War I, he was assigned to find a quicker and more efficient way to assemble and disassemble small arms. He also reduced all motions of the hand into a combination of 17 basic motions (called therbligs) and used a motion-picture camera calibrated in fractions of minutes to time the smallest motions of workers to teach managers that all aspects of the workplace should and could be constantly questioned, and improvements always made.
Then came Henry Ford. At one time Ford Motor Company was producing an incredible 8,000 cars every day in the largest industrial complex in the world, even producing their own steel. Ford had managed to reduce the cost of their vehicle, the Model T, every single year. His famous quote “you can have any colour as long as it is black” was born not just to simplify the manufacturing process but because black was the quickest colour to dry. The Ford Model T is still the 5th biggest-selling car of all time (the Volkswagen Beetle, Golf, Ford F-Series, and Toyota Corolla being ahead of it now). Ford also accounted for one-third of all vehicles in the world at that time. Henry Ford popularised the assembly line, flow lines, manufacturing strategy and welfare capitalism, paying his workers double the average daily wage so that they would stay and increase their productivity.
The next pioneers in process improvement were the statisticians and a rising East, which we will cover next week. But already we can see some essential key elements to explore in our own process improvement: standardisation, simplification, scientific study and management, and throughout, the belief that we can always increase our productivity.

Andrew McBean is a partner at Grant Thornton Management Consulting, a unit of Grant Thornton Thailand. Follow his article every third Monday of the month. He may be contacted at [email protected].