The Technology Machine How Manufacturing Will Work in the Year 2020

by Moody, Patricia E.; Morley, Richard E.

• ISBN13: 9781416576488
• ISBN10: 1416576487
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-09-10
• Publisher: Free Press

Summary

How will autonomous agents, emergent systems, and chaos theory change the way we live and work in the twenty-first century? As today's manufacturing and production systems grow increasingly complex, tomorrow's science of complexity will produce paradoxically simple solutions, argue technology experts Patricia Moody and Richard Morley in this astonishing vision of the year 2020.Containing both cutting-edge insights and simple truths that provide a roadmap to the future of business -- and illustrated by case examples from such companies as Motorola, Honda, GM, Solectron, Intel, Silicon Graphics, Modicon, Flavors, NeXT, Japanese Railway, and Andover Controls --The Technology Machinechallenges readers to understand the spirit and core drivers of growth: technology, knowledge, and individual excellence.By combining rigorous research with their extensive experience with technology advances that have changed industry, Moody and Morley are able to supply simple guidelines for future growth and detail their keen vision of future systems, leaders, and workers. They isolate the three bad business habits at the root of manufacturing problems today -- shortsightedness, restrictive structures, and unbalanced improvement fads -- show how to break them, and supply four infallible predictors of the types of breakthrough technologies that will come to dominate the world of the future. In that world, customers and suppliers are linked by real-time, online systems; business is driven by customer-designed, point-of-consumption replication of product; and a wide gap grows between "The Island of Excellence" organization of the future -- with its holistic approach, including two-year apprenticeships, uniforms, and morning exercises -- and "The Others," the non-elite, sweatshop-like, breakeven companies of the past. The book is eloquent, original, and essential reading for managers in every area of business and industry.

Author Biography

Patricia E. Moody is the former editor of AME's Target magazine, where she created breakthrough work on teams, Kaizen, new product development, and supply chain issues. She is a well-known manufacturing management consultant and writer with more than twenty-five years of industry and consulting experience. Her client list includes such industry leaders as Solectron, Motorola, Johnson & Johnson, and Mead Corporation.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

How Manufacturing Will Work

One Hundred Twenty-seven Wild Cards

Who We Will Be, and What We Will Do

WHACK, Why You Can't Get There from Here

Technology Rules! The PLC Breakthrough

Intelligent Systems that Will Get Us There

Chaos, Complex Adaptive Systems, and Other Enabling Technologies

The Big, Big Wave

Four Software Meta-Systems that Will Transform Manufacturing

Managing the Technology Machine

Two Meta-Systems: The Bullet Train and Plastics!

In the Land Where the Engineer Is King

Silicon Life on a Carbon Planet

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Authors

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.