Petrodollars

Number of words: 302 Toward the end of World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt attended a summit that changed the course of world history. No, net the famous meeting at Yalta, with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. Immediately after that gathering, Roosevelt traveled quietly to the USS Quincy, anchored in the Red Sea. The man … Read more

The Toyota Production System

Number of words: 631 In 1950, as part of the occupation effort of putting a demotic Japan back on its economic feet, Deming was invited to teach in Tokyo. There he preached his gospel of using statistics for quality control by recording quality performance and analyzing it, then altering processes to improve quality and measuring … Read more

The Rise of Toyota

Number of words: 807 Start with Toyota’s history and the world into which it emerged. It may seem surprising, but Toyota’s success owes a lot to America. It all started when an American naval officer, Commodore Matthew Perry, in 1853 sailed into Tokyo Bay with his so-called black ships to force the Japanese authorities to … Read more

Managing the Reservoir

Number of words: 184 Andrew Gould, chairman of Schlumberger, a French-American oil services giant, points out that twenty-five years ago, only one-sixth of exploration wells were successful, while two-thirds are today. Over that time, the success rate for development wells has risen from about 33 percent to nearly 100 percent. He is convinced that the … Read more

The origin of drilling for oil

Number of words: 170 “Oil is found in the minds of men.” So says a bumper sticker popular among petroleum engineers. True enough. In 1859, Colonel Edwin Drake struck oil in Pennsylvania by drilling, rather than digging, for oil; he adapted the old Chinese trick of drilling for salt. That prompted the world’s first oil … Read more

The French Influence on the US Auto Industry

Number of words: 273 Modern America and automobile grew up together. But like so many early-twentieth-century Americans, it was born elsewhere. “Automobile” is a French word. The nursery of the industry was France. In 1900, just seven years after the French people gave the United States the Statue of Liberty as a belated centennial birthday … Read more

From Disillusionment to Opportunity: The Etah Dairy Story

Number of words: 626 We then tried to sell the dairy. Dr V. Kurien had suggested that through National Dairy Development Board’s (NDDB) support, it might be possible for the Uttar Pradesh Government to acquire the Etah dairy. Kurien never liked HLL or any private sector incursion into the dairy industry, which he felt was … Read more