William A. Levinson, P.E., is the principal of Levinson Productivity Systems, P.C. He is an ASQ Fellow, Certified Quality Engineer, Quality Auditor, Quality Manager, Reliability Engineer, and Six Sigma Black Belt. He holds degrees in chemistry and chemical engineering from Penn State and Cornell Universities, and night school degrees in business administration and applied statistics from Union College, and he has given presentations at the ASQ World Conference, TOC World, and other national conferences on productivity and quality. Levinson is also the author of several books on quality, productivity, and management. Henry Ford's Lean Vision is a comprehensive overview of the lean manufacturing and organizational management methods that Ford employed to achieve unprecedented bottom-line results, and Beyond the Theory of Constraints describes how Ford's elimination of variation from material transfer and processing times allowed him to come close to running a balanced factory at full capacity. Statistical Process Control for Real-World Applications shows what to do when the process doesn't conform to the traditional bell curve assumption.
This book is an incredibly comprehensive analysis of the factors that drive a successful manufacturing economy. Levinson provides insights from pre-historic times to the current competition with China. He understands the importance of companies sourcing based on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) instead of wage rate or factory price. Our user data shows that about 30% of import from China would be reshored if companies followed this advice and did the math correctly. -- Harry Moser, President, The Reshoring Initiative (reshorenow.org)