[Bret L]

Lean manufacturing sucks. There, I said it.

Now, the idea is okay. The concept is to reduce time and effort in
manufacturing and increase common use of assemblies, thereby
decreasing inventory and the numbers of suppliers with whom you deal.

What keeps suppliers in line in about every country but Japan-the
most racially conscious and homogenous society in the world-is
competition. If Champion spark plugs are failing, you go to Autolite
or AC. When you design a part in conjunction with one supplier, and
rely on it exclusively, they have your balls in their pocket and they
know it. There IS no competition. That's why Deming made sense in
Japan, as he had at Restrum Erectric....err, wait, is there a
connection here? Did I hear "Shree Hundled Bee"?...Oh, another
story...

On electronically throttled engine cars, the gas pedal is simply a
controller sending an analog or digital signal to the ECM. They are
all different though-there isn't a standard foot feed controller
available as a commodity item, as with a spark plug or a shock
absorber. Toyota has one, Nissan another, GM half a dozen, etc.

We can make fun of GM for having half a dozen, but that means if one
is bad, one line of cars is impacted, not every car in the dealership.
Sales don't grind to a halt.

Eventually, Mahindra/Tata will come in underneath Toyota and make a
car with old tech, as much as they can get past the enviro-Nazis, with
9" Ford rear ends, and an engine using off the shelf parts, and sell
it cheaper and then Japan won't look so rosy. A hell of a lot of
Americans would love to buy "crude" Indian vehicles at Indian prices,
preferring not to have high tech in favor of repairability and
ruggedness. Indian prices for these new cars are lower than what BHPH
dealers get for fully depreciated used cars in the US.