路宁(luning)的博客

When people talk about a software project, they usually think of a car as the analogy in manufacturing industry. With this analogy, somebody believe that it makes no sense to 'translate' practices/ideas from manufactoring world because there are so many obvious differences/gaps between them. This thought also limits us from learning more from TPS(Toyota Production System) practices.

This is a misleading analogy. It's a group of cars designed, manufactured and delivered for a particular market within a period, which are compared to a software project, not just a single car. Below are more analogies:

Software Concept	Misleading Analogy in Manufacturing	Proper Analogy in Manufacturing
a software project	a car	a group of cars designed, manufactured and delivered for a particular market within a period. They may end up with great variety.
a software feature	a feature/part of a car	a car satisfying a customer
the lifecycle of a software project	the manufacturing stage of a car	a loop including steps of design, manufacture, deliver, after service, feedback, refine design, ...

Given the proper anology above, most TPS practices/ideas become inspiring and meaningful for software development.

And, it is meaningless to compare standard parts with standard software components in context of standard, the two industries share the same pursuit of the standard/better ways of adding values and solving problems in fact.