Factory Physics for Managers: How Leaders Improve Performance in a Post-Lean Six Sigma World

CHAPTER 10

Final Word on Factory Physics Science (for Now)

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

— Henry David Thoreau

We wrote this book to lay out a comprehensive, practical science for managing manufacturing, service, and supply-chain operations. In Chapter 3 we referred to the idea of conjecture and refutation as a way to advance ideas by testing them in practice to see which ones hold up as predictors of performance. While Karl Popper supported the idea that good science was always trying to refute its own conclusions, a more famous author, Thomas Kuhn, suggested that “normal science” operated within the limits of ...