<P> Taylor also warned explicitly against cutting piece rates (or, by implication, cutting wages or discharging workers) when efficiency improvements reduce the need for raw labor: "...after a workman has had the price per piece of the work he is doing lowered two or three times as a result of his having worked harder and increased his output, he is likely entirely to lose sight of his employer's side of the case and become imbued with a grim determination to have no more cuts if soldiering (marking time, just doing what he is told) can prevent it ." </P> <P> Shigeo Shingo, the best - known exponent of single minute exchange of die and error - proofing or poka - yoke, cites Principles of Scientific Management as his inspiration . </P> <P> American industrialists recognized the threat of cheap offshore labor to American workers during the 1910s, and explicitly stated the goal of what is now called lean manufacturing as a countermeasure . Henry Towne, past President of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, wrote in the Foreword to Frederick Winslow Taylor's Shop Management (1911), "We are justly proud of the high wage rates which prevail throughout our country, and jealous of any interference with them by the products of the cheaper labor of other countries . To maintain this condition, to strengthen our control of home markets, and, above all, to broaden our opportunities in foreign markets where we must compete with the products of other industrial nations, we should welcome and encourage every influence tending to increase the efficiency of our productive processes ." </P> <P> Henry Ford initially ignored the impact of waste accumulation while developing his mass assembly manufacturing system . Charles Buxton Going wrote in 1915: </P>

The american version of lean production has been called