My Life My Work

The autobiography of Henry Ford is the first book that I finished reading in 2022. I don’t know why I picked it up but I was happy with my decision. I have always learnt about the work of Henry Ford in the form of assembly line by industry experts who are optimisation enthusiasts. I was very impressed by the depth of analysis that Mr Ford has presented on how he built his business. The book may be 100 years old now but it seems very pertinent for people who look to start businesses today. As many pursue the valuations of their start-ups in current times, Mr Ford defines the objective of the business as a service to the society with a strong pursuit of bringing down the cost and continuously improving the quality of product. This sounds so intuitive and the right thing to do however contrary to current business ethos where companies want to make a fat profit margin and want the product to be old and obsolete in 2-3 years so that they can sell more. I wonder if big companies like Apple can afford to do what Mr Ford did. 

He mentions curtailing the waste during the manufacturing processes on multiple occasions in this book. It also reminds me of an expert who once told me that, ‘Nature is very frugal. It does not waste anything.’ I wonder why nobody called Mr Henry Ford, the father of Lean! Towards the end of the book he writes about applying his life lessons in other domains from the rail road to building a hospital. I have always heard about such lean management concepts from my expert colleagues and advisers in the healthcare setting.