A short essay by Eliyahu Goldratt, the creator of the Theory of Constraints (TOC), paying tribute to henry-ford and taiichi-ohno as the two giants whose flow-based production thinking underlies all modern manufacturing. Goldratt argues that Ford discovered flow production and Ohno extended it to handle product variety — the problem Ford's system could not solve.
The essay is significant for bridging TPS and TOC — two production philosophies often treated as competing alternatives. Goldratt's argument: both are fundamentally about achieving flow, and the differences between them are less important than their shared insight that the goal of production is throughput, not local efficiency.