Efficient Music Production: How To Make Better Music, Faster

Preface

It was 1913 in Highland Park, Michigan, and Henry Ford had a vision that would change the world forever.

Ford built cars. The Model T, introduced in 1908, was a simple and relatively inexpensive vehicle. It was still beyond the pockets of most consumers however, and cars were generally the preserve of the privileged few. Ford was determined to reverse this trend and build cars for the great multitude.

The average car took over twelve hours to build, and Ford understood that the key to reducing the cost of his cars was to build more of them, for a lower outlay during assembly. The Model T had already begun life based on the idea of efficiency through simplicity. There was only one possible chassis available for example, and Ford had pioneered the use of vanadium steel which was lighter, stronger and cheaper than alternatives available at the time. Now Ford turned his attention to the building process itself.

Ford broke the Model T’s assembly process down into eighty-four discrete steps. He converted his plant workers’ roles from general engineers who oversaw everything, to specialists who would only oversee a few steps each, the theory being that a specialist in a limited number of tasks would be far more efficient than someone with multiple responsibilities.

He then hired efficiency expert Frederick Winslow Taylor to further analyse each step. One of Taylor’s key methods was called the time and motion study, in which the average duration of each step was determined and measures then implemented to reduce it.

The cumulative effect of all these small efficiencies was tremendous. It culminated in the streamlined process that became known as the assembly line, in which the cars moved through each of the eighty-four steps on a belt moving at six feet per minute. The efficiency gains of the assembly line had effectively quartered the average time to manufacture one car to around three hours.

In 1924, Ford’s ten-millionth Model T rolled off the assembly line and thanks to its innovations and efficiency, Ford’s dominance in the car market was sealed - for the time being at least. It had allowed Ford to cut prices by half and then half again, from $850 in 1909 to just $290 by 1924.

In the early 1950s, Taiichi Ohno also had a vision. Ohno was an executive at Toyota’s automotive division, having been brought over from Toyota’s fabric manufacturing division to improve productivity and efficiency.

Between 1945 and 1955 Ohno experimented with many different concepts in production in order to increase efficiency. Rather than follow the mass production system of the US auto industry, Ohno eventually developed a system modelled on the way supermarkets operated, a concept that became known as Just-in-Time.

Toyota was not a wealthy company and could not afford to waste money on excess equipment or materials. They expected the acquisition of materials to happen on time, using the minimum amount of resources required for the task, much as a supermarket re-stocks its shelves with the appropriate amount of products according to customer demand. In Ohno’s model, the demand for materials accordingly came from the production workers themselves as needed, rather than from management. Ohno’s innovative approach eventually became known as the Toyota Production System.

The four goals of the Toyota Production System were:

1) Provide world class quality and service to the customer.

2) Develop each employee’s potential.

3) Reduce cost and maximise profit through the elimination of waste (a concept currently known as lean manufacturing).

4) Develop flexible production standards based on market demand.

It is the third goal –the minimisation of waste - that we will mainly focus on in this book.

Ohno identified seven types of waste:

1) Correction/scrap – this is where products are defective or require repairs.

2) Overproduction – this is where too many products are produced, or they are produced too early.

3) Waiting – this is where products are delayed for any reason.

4) Conveyance – this is the time products spend in transit between areas.

5) Processing –