A case study of the methods required to revive manufacturing industries.
The story of one of the most innovative companies in the world: the automobile manufacturer that makes some of the best-selling and longest-lasting cars on the road.
Superlatives aside, Honda's record speaks for itself, and International Business Times editor in chief Rothfeder (McIlhenny's Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire, 2007, etc.) highlights the achievements of its founder, Soichiro Honda (1906-1991). In the United States, Honda remains at the pinnacle of the auto industry, with such iconic models as the Civic, Accord and Odyssey; 75 percent of the cars and trucks it manufactured over the last 25 years are still on the road. For skeptics, the author's acknowledgments and the reference section detailing his sources will be helpful. In Rothfeder's telling, Honda is a much different auto manufacturer than others. Unlike Toyota, for example, it is not organized as a top-down pyramid of control. Honda's flat-type organization encourages local inputs. In Marysville, Ohio, technician Shubho Bhattacharya's Intelligent Paint Technology reduced “energy usage in the paint shop by 25 percent” and was rapidly deployed globally to like effect. Unlike General Motors and Ford, Honda also builds its own machinery, and workers cooperate with engineers to configure production lines, as they did in Lincoln, Arkansas. There, the “line's coiled shape” helped reduce its footprint and costs while providing a flexible assembly and quality-control capability. Soichiro Honda's career as an innovator took off in the 1920s, when he patented a design for unbreakable cast-iron auto wheels, and continued through his mastery of the skills required to manufacture piston rings that could improve combustion engine performance. Since then, the company has led the way in engine development. As the founder said, “success can be achieved only through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents one percent of your work, which results only from the ninety-nine percent that is called failure.”
A case study of the methods required to revive manufacturing industries.Pub Date: July 31, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59184-473-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
A scholar's lively account of how White Castle, now a largely overlooked but still profitable also-ran in the domestic restaurant trade, made the once-scorned hamburger a US institution and launched the fast-food industry. Drawing on a variety of sources, historian Hogan (Heidelberg Coll.) first reviews the ethnic and regional character of America's food preferences prior to the 1920s. He goes on to document the accomplishments of the two men who founded White Castle late in 1921 in Wichita, Kans.: Walt Anderson, inventor of the hamburger, and Billy Ingram, whose marketing genius helped make Anderson's creation a staple of American diets. On the strength of standardization, quality control, a commitment to cleanliness, and conservative financial practices, they soon had a lucrative national network of faux-citadel outlets vending tiny ground-meat patties served with an abundance of pungent onions on diminutive buns for a nickel apiece; enjoining customers to ``buy em by the sack,'' the partners also pioneered the take-out business. Although it survived the Great Depression in fine style, White Castle was hard hit by WW II's home-front price controls, shortages, and restrictions. Having staggered through the 1940s, however, the company retained its fanatically loyal clientele in the cities while formidable new rivals (Big Boy, Gino's, Hardee's, Howard Johnson, McDonald's, et al.) preempted fast-growing suburban markets. Although no longer a leader in the field of franchising giants it helped create, White Tower occupies a rewarding niche that, thanks to effective management practices, promises to provide worthwhile returns for years to come. Informed and engaging perspectives on an often ignored aspect of cultural and commercial Americana. The 20 illustrations include contemporary photos of White Castle outlets and the company's early advertisements.
Pub Date: Dec. 15, 1997
ISBN: 0-8147-3566-5
Page Count: 230
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
Ashworth (The Late, Great Lakes, 1986) makes a plausible if not wholly credible case for the offbeat proposition that ecology and economics, in concert, could provide the best response to both the escalating cost of living and a decline in the quality of life. Noting that the natural and social sciences share a Greek root (oikos, meaning household), the author offers a series of short essays designed to show that environmentalism and for-profit enterprise have much in common. Indeed, he argues, whatever harms or is good for the biosphere injures or benefits the marketplace- -and vice versa. Along similarly pragmatic lines, Ashworth suggests that ravaging the planet and its resources is a fiscally irresponsible act akin to eating one's seed corn—or dipping into capital. To persuade the friends of earth and the friends of industry that their differences are not irreconcilable, Ashworth gets back to genuine basics. Cases in point include short takes on Econ 101 fundamentals like carrying capacity, fund flows, and the forces of supply and demand, whose relevance to the rain forests may come as news to diehard preservationists. By the same token, his low-key briefings on renewable resources and monocultures could prove thought-provoking for those who believe that protection of endangered species and old-growth timber invariably costs society too much in terms of jobs and economic growth. As for why ecologic theory is more congruent with economic theory than antithetical to it, Ashworth's explanations are unexceptionable. But theory is one thing, practice another. In failing to detail how the paradigmatic synthesis could be made to work, the author lacks the courage of his arresting convictions. It's not easy being green, and Ashworth's accommodation agenda may remind some readers of the possibly apocryphal tale about the UN functionary who opined that Arabs and Jews should sit down and settle their differences like good Christians.
Pub Date: Jan. 9, 1995
ISBN: 0-395-65566-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
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