Frank George Woollard facts for kids
Frank George Woollard MBE (born 22 September 1883 – died 22 December 1957) was a clever British mechanical engineer. He spent almost 30 years working in the British car industry. He helped design cars, make them, and manage factories. He was a pioneer in what we now call "Lean management," which is a way to make things very efficiently. Sadly, his important work was largely forgotten for a long time.
Contents
Who Was Frank Woollard?
Frank Woollard is considered one of the founders of the British car industry. He made big contributions to how things were made in factories, especially with "flow production." This is a method where products move continuously through the factory, rather than being made in batches. He also helped create modern ways of managing factories and using machines automatically.
In 1918, Woollard received an award called the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). He earned this for making tank gearboxes better during World War I. His improvements helped speed up tank production.
Woollard's amazing work at Morris Engines Limited, starting in 1923, helped Morris Motors Limited grow very quickly. By 1930, Morris Motors made 34 percent of all cars sold in Britain!
Frank Woollard was born in London, England. His father, George, was a butler, and his mother, Emily, was a kitchen maid. He went to the City of London School where he was excellent at math and science. In 1914, he married Catherine Elizabeth Richards. They had a son who sadly died as a baby, and a daughter named Joan Elizabeth, born in 1916.
Woollard's Career in Engineering
After finishing school, Woollard started a five-year apprenticeship in 1899. He trained as a mechanical engineer at the London and South Western Railway. In 1904, he first experienced a basic form of "flow production" while helping to build railway coaches.
Around 1905, he began working in the British car industry. He started as a designer for car parts. In 1910, he joined E G Wrigley & Co Limited in Birmingham. This company made gearboxes, axles, and steering parts for many British car companies. Woollard became the chief draughtsman, leading a team of 18 professionals.
In 1914, he became a production engineer at Wrigley's. He changed how things were made from "batch production" (making parts in groups) to a simpler "flow production." This helped the company make more vehicle parts to meet growing orders. By January 1918, he was promoted to assistant managing director at Wrigley's.
Working with William Morris
William Morris, who later became Lord Nuffield, owned Morris Motors. He knew Woollard because Morris Motors bought parts from Wrigley's. Morris saw how talented Woollard was at designing and making car parts. So, when Morris bought E G Wrigley's business in January 1923, he made Woollard the general manager of Morris Engines Limited.
With Morris's support and money, Woollard immediately started to reorganize engine production. He changed it from batch production to flow production. This was a huge success! In January 1923, they made less than 300 engines per week. By December 1923, they were making 600 engines per week. And by December 1924, they were making 1200 engines every week! To achieve this amazing increase, Woollard created an advanced flow production system, even for making smaller numbers of products.
The big changes in the production system happened very quickly, in less than two years. For comparison, reorganizing Toyota's engine factory about 25 years later took six years, and they were making half the number of engines that Morris Motors was.
In 1926, Woollard joined the main board of Morris Motors. However, he later had disagreements with William Morris, who liked to keep tight control. So, in 1932, Woollard moved on to become the managing director of Rudge-Whitworth.
After 1936, he found it hard to get jobs with the big car manufacturers. But he continued to write, joined some company boards, and became active at the University of Birmingham and Birmingham College of Technology. He led the College of Technology's industrial administration group from 1951 to 1957.
Professional Groups and Associations
Woollard's new methods didn't seem to be fully appreciated by the car industry at the time. However, he was active and respected in his professional groups, which included:
- President of the Institution of Automobile Engineers (IAE) from 1945 to 1947. He had joined this group in 1915.
- First chairman of the automobile division of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME). He helped merge the IAE and IME in 1947.
- Member of the Institution of Production Engineers.
- Chairman of the executive committee of the Aluminium Development Association from 1949 to 1952.
- Chairman of the Zinc Alloy Diecasting Association from 1952 to 1956.
- A founding member of the British Institute of Management.
- Member of the American Society of Automotive Engineers.
Frank Woollard passed away from heart failure in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Edgbaston, Birmingham, on 22 December 1957.
Why Woollard's Work Was Important
Woollard's flow production system was very similar to what we now call Lean manufacturing. He used many of the same ideas and processes that are part of Lean production today. These included (using modern terms):
- U-shaped work areas
- Workers who could do many different jobs
- Takt time (setting the pace of production)
- Standardized work steps
- Just-in-time manufacturing (making things only when needed)
- Supermarkets (small storage areas for parts)
- Autonomation (machines that stop when there's a problem)
- Quick changes between different products
Because of this, Woollard was able to show, even before Toyota, that making products in a continuous flow, even in smaller amounts, could be as cheap or cheaper than making huge amounts like Ford did.
He was also the first to create machines that could automatically move materials, called "automatic transfer machines." These helped make flow production possible. About 25 years later, these machines became common in car factories all over the world. Overall, Woollard's contribution to modern manufacturing methods was huge, similar to what Taiichi Ohno did at Toyota. He was a great pioneer in the early 1900s for modern management, flow production, and automated factories.
Changing the History of Lean Management
Woollard started using flow production in 1923. This means that the timelines for who discovered key ideas in Lean management might need to be updated. For example, Kiichiro Toyoda is often credited with creating Just-in-Time (JIT) production in 1937. And Taiichi Ohno is credited with inventing "supermarkets" in 1953 to supply parts to later steps in production. However, Woollard had already set up and used these ideas in his flow production system between 1923 and 1925. Other ideas, like autonomation, seem to have been discovered separately by Sakichi Toyoda and Frank Woollard.
Woollard's work is important because he wasn't just interested in using new machines to replace people or make more products. He warned that the main goal was to achieve "flow," and machines could help, but weren't always necessary. He also warned against loving machines just for the sake of it.
Woollard saw factory workers as a key part of the production system, not separate from it. He gave them responsibilities that supervisors usually handled. He also allowed workers to help improve how things were made. This was very new for his time, though it was simpler than Toyota's later efforts to develop workers' skills after World War II. Woollard understood that just having flow in production wasn't enough. Managers and workers had to connect all the steps, from beginning to end, to achieve flow throughout the entire company.
Woollard clearly understood the idea of continuous improvement in a flow environment. He said that "the good thing about flow production is that it shows all the problems, so you can fix them." He also believed that "the clear view of the company's activities given by flow production will lead to endless and continuous improvement."
Additionally, Woollard understood that for flow production to work, it had to benefit everyone, not just the company. Workers had to be respected and also gain from flow production, along with customers. He realized that if flow caused harm, then materials and information wouldn't move smoothly. Woollard understood and practiced what we now call "Continuous Improvement" and "Respect for People"—the two main principles of Lean management. He included these ideas in his 18 principles of flow production.
Woollard's work on flow production in the mid-to-late 1920s happened almost 15 years before Kiichiro Toyoda became interested in it. It's worth noting that Woollard's work was well-known and written about in technical car production and engineering magazines. Papers written by Woollard and William Morris showed they really wanted to share the details of their new continuous flow production system. They wanted to show off British industrial skill. Their work was not a secret and was easy for anyone interested in advanced car production methods to learn about.
Woollard's Legacy
Woollard wrote many articles for journals and trade magazines about his flow production system. These were published in the mid-1920s, and again in the late 1940s and mid-1950s. His detailed technical papers appeared in a widely read magazine called Machinery. Those papers, along with his 1954 book, Principles of Mass and Flow Production, were forgotten for reasons that aren't clear.
Woollard is truly the forgotten pioneer of Lean management. His work is completely missing from books and studies about Lean management. This shows a big oversight by researchers in both Lean management and production.
Woollard died in late 1957, and his life's work seemed to die with him. His daughter, Joan, was a talented artist and apparently couldn't keep her father's work alive. Woollard's colleagues admired him and his achievements greatly, but they eventually passed away too. No one continued his work until recently.
Woollard's work has been brought back to light by Professor Bob Emiliani, a historian and author of Lean management. In January 2009, he published a special 55th Anniversary Edition of Woollard's 1954 book, Principles of Mass and Flow Production. This new edition also includes Woollard's 1925 paper "Some Notes on British Methods of Continuous Production" and Dr. Emiliani's comments and analysis of Woollard's work.
Morris Motors Ltd. stopped existing in 1952 when it merged with Austin Motor Company, Ltd. to form British Motor Corporation. Sadly, even great new ways of making things and new machines aren't enough to guarantee a company's long-term success. Managers and employees also need to be excellent at many other business tasks. These include listening to customers for new designs, developing new products quickly, introducing new car technologies, and providing good service after a sale. An advanced production system alone won't make a company successful forever.
