Steve Blank’s first job out of the Air Force and out of school was installing broadband process control systems in automotive and manufacturing plants throughout the Midwest in the mid-1970s, where he got to watch the demise of the auto industry:
[Automobile plants] were like being inside a pinball machine. At the Ford plant in Milpitas the plant foreman proudly took me down the line. I remember stopping at one station a little confused about its purpose. All the other stations on the assembly line had groups workers with power tools adding something to the car.This station just had one guy with a 2×4 piece of lumber, a large rubber mallet and a folded blanket. His spot was right after the station where they had dropped the hoods down on the cars, and had bolted them in. As I was watched, the next car rolled down the line, the station before attached the hood, and as the car approached this station, the worker took the 2×4, shoved it under one corner of the hood and put the blanket over the top of the hood and started pounding it with the rubber mallet while prying with the lumber. “It’s our hood alignment station,” the plant manager said proudly. These damn models weren’t designed right so we’re fixing them on the line.”
I had a queasy feeling that perhaps this wasn’t the way to solve the car quality problem. Little did I know that I was watching the demise of the auto industry in front of my eyes.