Frank George Woollard

In 1910 he joined E G Wrigley & Co Limited, Birmingham, a maker of gearboxes, axles, and steering components for various British automobile companies, as chief draughtsman in a department with a professional staff of 18, then in 1914 Woollard assumed responsibilities as production engineer.

He re-organized production from batch to a simple form of flow to meet increased orders for vehicle components.

[3] His innovative methods seemed little appreciated by the industry though he was active and it would seem respected in his professional associations which included: He died of heart failure in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Edgbaston, Birmingham on 22 December 1957.

This included (using current terminology): U-shaped cells, multi-skilled workers, takt time, standardised work, Just-in-time manufacturing, supermarkets, autonomation, quick change-over, etc.

He was also the first to develop mechanical materials handling equipment known as automatic transfer machines to facilitate flow production, which some 25 years later would become common in the global automotive industry.

Woollard's application of flow production beginning in 1923 means that timelines for discoveries and attributions of key accomplishments in Lean management must be revised.

Woollard's work is important because he was not a technocrat solely interested in using new machines to replace men and increase productive output.

Woollard viewed factory workers as part of the production system, not separate from it, and gave them responsibilities that normally would have been handled by supervisors.

Papers written by Woollard and William Morris showed their strong desire to share the details of their innovative continuous flow production system with others and to showcase British industrial prowess.

Woollard wrote numerous journal papers and trade magazine articles on his flow production system in the mid-1920 and into the late 1940s and mid-1950s.

Woollard's colleagues had tremendous admiration for him and his accomplishments, but they would eventually pass away and nobody carried his work forward until recently.

Managers and employees must excel at many other business processes including responding to the voice of the customer with new designs, short cycle-time product development, introducing new automotive technologies, aftermarket service, and so on.