Whitney, Eli

Eli Whitney (December 8, 1765 – January 8, 1825) is most widely known for his invention of the cotton gin.

What is more applicable to Lean, though, is his focus on quality, specifically interchangeable parts.

The legend goes that he was awarded a contract to make muskets for the fledgling colonial army. At the time, it was a painstaking process with parts needing to be matched and modified to fit together properly. According to the story, he showed up at a review with a bag of parts and surprised the customers by being able to randomly grab components and have them fit together. They were, understandably impressed.

NOTE: I have also heard that the parts were a setup and were not actually random. They had been pre-modified to work. But that debate is not critical to the actual point.
The point is that Whitney did come up with quality innovations that led to the concept of interchangeable parts.

NOTE: This video is not specifically about Eli Whitney, but if you are interested in him, you will also likely be interested in learning about “critical to quality” metrics.