Beer: The Machine That Changed the World

Preparing for my master degree on project management abroad, I asked the director of my course to suggest a pre-reading list so I could familiarize myself with the subject. “The Machine That Changed the World” by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones and Daniel Roos is the book that he recommended to me. After three chapters of this book, I find the book quite technical and I do not like it because of the engineering subject, the academic style, and the statistics.

  Firstly, the book is based on an engineering subject - the motor industry to be specific. It talks about the revolution of global car production in the nineteenth century. Ford dominated the motor industry with ‘Mass Production’ while Toyota competed against the pioneer with ‘Lean Production’. It is difficult for me to understand and differentiate these two production methods because I have zero knowledge in engineering. My current job is in human rights, and at work, I take care of projects to promote and to protect human rights starting from budgeting, implementing, and reporting. When we go on missions, we meet and help people who have been violated in their human rights. I feel that  dealing with people is easier than trying to understand motor production.

Secondly, the book is written in an academic style because it is adapted from MIT’s global study. If you carefully review the contents page, you will see the structure of a thesis which is introduction (the industry), literature review (the origins of lean production), data and methodology (the elements of lean production), results (diffusing lean production), and discussion (epilogue). The language used is also academic English with terms and jargon from the engineering field. I graduated from the Faculty of Arts with an English major in 2012. Since I left university, I went directly to the career world and have not read anything academic for a long time. It took me a while to brush up my reading skills and to settle into academic mode. 

Last but not least, the book contains statistics that illustrate the picture of both types of production in the industry. There are many graphs and tables that explain important information, for example, production rate, market share, and income. This may help other readers to understand the subject better, but not me. I am not very good at mathematics and I always avoided it from high school to university. Funnily enough, I have been assigned to audit the financial report from the organisation that received a grant from my office. It turned out very well because of my tentative skill and help from Excel.

Despite the fact that I do not like it, I am going to finish this book before my semester starts this coming September. I may not understand the motor industry, but I will get the principal concept of project management. This is a tool that can apply to any industry in the world.