Fred Brooks Quotes

If you're going to build a lean enterprise, you can test and measure how often the company ships iterations, how often it fails, how often it is putting things in front of people that don't work.

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.

Technology is a continuum. It's constantly getting lower-cost and easier to use, and you see that, and that's true with our company.

For decades, the pace of technological change in manufacturing has outstripped that in the economy as a whole. And, so, firms - manufacturing firms - have found it easier to continue producing by - with - reducing their workforces.

The industrial revolution in the new century is, in essence, a scientific and technological revolution, and breaking through the cutting edge is a shortcut to the building of an economic giant.

I'm known for being very enthusiastic about using technology. A lot of the attraction is the way that it streamlines the process and takes a lot of the drudgery out of it.

We had to address information technology in the ways we had not before and give the agents the tools that they need to do their job more efficiently and more expeditiously.

The most important impact on society and the world is the cell phone. Cell phones have actually been one of the primary drivers in productivity improvements.

For much of Toyota's history, we have ensured the quality and reliability of our vehicles by placing a device called an andon cord on every production line - and empowering any team member to halt production if there's an assembly problem. Only when the problem is resolved does the line begin to move again.

Success in business today requires real-time, mobile access to business opportunities.

My view is that innovation has declined in the everyday processes that businesses tinker with incrementally as they try to become more productive over time.

Now we teach our leaders that it's your job to put in the systems that enable your people to run your experiments fast and cheap and to keep making them faster and cheaper. Yield as many of your decisions off to the experiment as possible.

When you think of technological revolution, you probably think of geeks in cool coastal spaces like the Google campus, or perhaps of math wizards on Wall Street. But one source of rural prosperity is the adoption of radical new technologies - and a consequent surge in productivity.

The way we look at manufacturing is this: the U.S.'s strategy should be to skate where the puck is going, not where it is.

The shift in demand is toward partners that can improve productivity, and in part, that can be done by software.

Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.

Quality comes not from inspection, but from improvement of the production process.

You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.

The "patron saint" of Japanese quality control, ironically, is an American named W. Edwards Deming, who was virtually unknown in his own country until his ideas of quality control began to make such a big impact on Japanese companies.

Detect and fix any problem in a production process at the lowest stage possible.

Many good American companies have respect for individuals, and practice Kaizen and other TPS {Toyota Production System} tools. But what is important is having all of the elements together as a system. It must be practiced every day in a very consistent manner–not in spurts–in a concrete way on the shop floor.

Efficiency is doing better what is already being done.

Labor-rich manufacturing doesn't exist anymore. Manufacturing jobs are white-collar, Silicon Valley programmers or highly-skilled technicians. They are not going to employ lots of people.

In the emerging, highly programmed landscape ahead, you will either create the software or you will be the software. It's really that simple: Program, or be programmed. Choose the former, and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make.

Always, in your career and personal life, be evolving with technology.