"This part of the article is no surprise, but it still makes me shake my head in disbelief: "Ask Laishley how long it takes to build a Caterham and he answers candidly, “I don’t know.” That’s because each builder has his or her own methods and each car is unique."
How can you drive towards consistent quality, efficiency, and profitability in a production environment when everyone does it their own way? The new space is pretty though."
Yes, sometimes there are many ways to do a job. But, there is almost always the BEST WAY and all the other ways are not as good, some terrible. I am always amazed reading builders' logs with horror stories. A kit from a company that has done the same basic kit for 50 years could be expected to find the best way and enforce it.
It took Porsche until the early 1990s to see the light, with help from Japanese consultants. It took Ferrari even longer, but they finally got it well over 20 years ago.