Gemba Panta Rei

How to motivate people to change? A day later and I still don't know, but Taiichi Ohno's "game of wits" comes to mind (see chapter 25 of Workplace Management). A game is something that is fun. Most of us are motivated, at least in part, by fun.

In order to lead a large number of people, you have to be tough when it comes to work. However I think this is basically not a matter of giving orders or instructions, but a game of wits with subordinates. I tell people “When you give an order or an instruction to a subordinate you have to think as if you were given the order or instruction yourself.” And if you lose this game of wits, you have to swiftly admit it.

By the 1980s when Ohno's words were recorded the Japanese had a lot of material wealth. It was not the first three levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs that motivated people but fourth or fifth, recognition and self-actualization.

Here Ohno is saying that you should give a problem or a difficult task to your subordinate (an order) and think for yourself how to accomplish it. This can be quite a challenging game if you have capable subordinates, or a lot of subordinates.

In a game there is win or lose. Whether or not people are very competitive, they like to do a good job and be recognized for it. This is the fourth level of Maslow's hierarchy.

So the game of wits is, in part, giving challenges to subordinates and thinking with them to make sure that they succeed, giving them suggestions if necessary but playing down your own contribution and giving credit to your subordinates. Ohno is talking about motivating people by being a humble leader that others willingly follow.

In chapter 28 of Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management he addresses the issue of how to play the game of wits:

Earlier I spoke about a “game of wits” but just think of your wits as something that do not work unless you feel the squeeze. So how do we make everybody feel the squeeze?

I have translated the Japanese title of this chapter 知恵は困らにゃ出てこん as "Wits Don't Work Until You Feel the Squeeze." This is a standard Toyota-ism, though Ohno's expressions is a bit colloquial, and this is one that deserves to be etched on the brains of Lean thinkers and problem solvers everywhere.

This phrase can also be translated as "Wits don't work unless you have problems / troubles / struggles" or "You won't have good ideas until you are under pressure" and so forth. The meaning is very similar to "necessity is the mother of invention" but stronger.

If you are a person that is never satisfied, it is not hard to play the game of wits with subordinates and motivate them to improve themselves and their work by solving challenging problems. I think Ohno recognized that most people have a tendency to be complacent and to take the path of least resistance, and that is why he said:

Specifically, the game of wits is to think of how to make people feel the squeeze. If you can make them feel like they are being squeezed to death, they will come up with good ideas for sure.

What an odd, counterintuitive way to motivate people. Satisfy their basic need for physical safety, security, belonging, recognition and then plunge them back into a sense of deep trouble and struggle, so that through challenge people will rise up and self-actualize.

But it is very important to remember that Ohno also said:

How do we make them feel the squeeze? In order to make them feel the squeeze you have to feel the squeeze yourself, so that you can use your wits also.

It takes two to play the game of wits, and motivation starts with the squeeze.

Go to part 1
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Posted by at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

How to motivate people to change? That question was asked recently. It's a good question and one that we should not assume we know the answer to. It is not a question that should be addressed in your organizations by professional instructors, consultants or highly paid motivational speakers on a caffeine buzz.

This is a central question to making change happen. Making change happen in a way that is good for people is what continuous improvement is all about. This question deserves some scientific attention. You won't find the answers here, you'll have to go to gemba and ask your own people.

I was introduced to Abraham Maslow and the Hierarchy of Needs not in school (Motivation 101? I could never wake up for that class. Ha, ha.) but as something that one of my Japanese sensei casually referred to when answering the "How to motivate people?" question addressed to him some years ago. To our shame, neither I nor the American manager had heard of this American psychologist. It was not the first or the last time I would have to help a Japanese sensei scold some Americans for being ignorant of one or another important American sensei (Ford, Deming...).

The manager or change agent who ignores the basic fact that people must feel safe, loved and provided for before they can be motivated to change and achieve beyond what is known and familiar, is doomed to fail. People want to know "What's in it for me?" when faced with change brought down upon them. Face the question, and make sure you're building the pyramid, from the base up.

Success may come in the short term when motivation is through a combination of fear and reward centering on financial safety and security, belonging to a group and achievement of status, as Jack Welch's approach to leadership and development of managers has proved. There is some question as to whether this type of approach to motivation is sustainable, and at the very least it is not one that can be applied to motivate 100% of the workforce.

When we ask how to motivate people to change, we should ask "What do our people need?" If the need is for a safe working environment with less fatigue and injury, offering more financial rewards or merit badges will not get you far. If financial security is the primary need, offering self actualization and opportunities for innovation and creativity will sound hollow and false to the people you are trying to motivate.

If you are asking "How to motivate people to change?" over a short-term horizon of less than 5 or 10 years, you will get a very different answer than if you ask the question with a 50 or 100 year planning horizon. Most of us may not work that long, but we do live that long and have a hierarchy of needs that remains with us throughout that time, as change inevitably happens to us.

Go to part 2
Go to part 3

Posted by at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Here is an update to the story of Toyota instructors teaching TPS to the Japan Post and a partial answer to the question Toyota Botches Lean Implementation at Japan Post? posted earlier in this blog.

The following is a summary from the morning paper of the Daily Mainichi on December 29, 2006 Japan Post: Costs Still Require Kaizen 4 Years Into Toyota Way Implementation (Japanese).

The postal service did not grind to a halt over the New Year's holiday card peak season as feared because of troubles with Just In Time implementation at Japan Post.

The article describes the post office mail sorting area as resembling a factory production line with many "work management boards" used as an application of Toyota's "visualization" or visual management aimed at making it possible to see problems as they occur. Work has been divided up in 15 minute "units" or groups of letters and packages, and the status of these "units" is written on the boards. When delays become visible, workers can help out.

The desks used for sorting have been raised to standing height using pipe, and productivity has improved 31.3% at one branch. One of the challenges, according to the article, his how to reassign and utilize the 2,400 workers who have been freed up through 18% reduction in labor hours due to kaizen, across the 1,000 post office branches implementing JPS.

Japan Post is faced with the challenge of becoming a profitable operation prior to their privatization on October of 2007 and the "new gemba management system" called JPS (Japan Post System) modeled on the Toyota Production System was first introduced in January of 2002, led by a former Toyota executive and a team of Toyota instructors. Over 80% of the regular post offices of Japan Post have implemented JPS.

The article reports that some Japan Post employees protest to their labor union about JPS being forced upon the postal service which has a proud tradition. They view work in the post office as being different from work in automobile factories in that the day to day work has more variation, and that worker experience and intuition play a bigger part.

Viewed objectively, JPS was indeed forced upon the proud, experienced, traditional Japan Post workers. I suppose a bailout by the Japanese taxpayer would have been less disruptive to the lives and ways of these postal workers, but that's been tried many times, and it doesn't deliver improvement.

When Toyota was forced to develop and implement their system 50+ years ago it was forced upon them. Nobody makes drastic, painful changes when times are good. That's the problem.

Change arrives, and does not care how much experience, pride or skill you have. If you are clinging to the rock of the past when the waves of change are beating your shores, it's only a matter of time until you are washed away. It's time to learn how to surf. That's the cold, salty truth.

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My friend Ron Pereira started a blog two weeks ago called Lean Six Sigma Academy. The articles so far have been an interesting mix of topics such as Process Mapping - Lean or Six Sigma Tool?, CAVE People, Lean or Six Sigma?, Six Sigma and JIT, The Heated Law of Dispersions, The Forgotten Ms, and The Evolution of Dance (?). Take advantage of your free scholarship at the Lean Six Sigma Academy and enjoy Ron's insights.

Yesterday the Lean Six Sigma Academy pointed out this very good 4-minute Youtube video on the the Toyota factory in Cambridge, Ontario.

On the question of whether doing so much kaizen does or does not put the workers' jobs at risk, Jeff Leclair, Manager of Training & Development says:

"We don't lay people off. There hasn't been a layoff worldwide since 1950."

What is the Toyota culture? One of the senior managers interviews says:

"We set up a standard. Then we work hard to reach the standard. Then we raise the bar. That is our culture."

One question that was not asked is "How far does Toyota's kaizen culture extend beyond the factory floor?" At minute 1:59 in the Youtube video there is a very quick glimpse of an open office at Toyota. The 5S is not so good, and that could be on indication of how far Toyota has taken their kaizen culture.

Back in the 1980s Taiichi Ohno was critical of the lack of effective rationalization efforts or kaizen at Toyota's administrative areas, in chapter 26 titled There Are No Supervisors at the Administrative Gemba in Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management.

A couple of corrections to the announcer's commentary, just so false information doesn't perpetrate "Toyota builds cars the same way Dell builds computers." It's the other way around, actually. And "built in quality" is jidoka (not jikoda) but close enough.

Nice find, and keep up the good work Ron!

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By Marcie MacRae

Going into the holidays and having the majority of the staff out of the office can be a good time to implement a big kaizen in the office. This year while staff was on winter holidays, the admin team and two consultants set out to improve our office. Now I should mention that this happens about every six months, and this is not our first, nor our last change.

Here is what the office looked like before Christmas 2006:

The kaizen team that was working on this office re-layout event were given some goals:

1. Create more room for a visual management area
2. Get rid of clutter and un-used office furniture
3. Make the office more open to create a feeling of space
4. Remove obstacles to mobility (bookshelves on wheels)
5. Make common items more centralized

BEFORE:
Our last change to our office left us with numerous desks, built out of pipe & joint material. These desks were spread around the office some in pods of two or three, some against walls. Of course all of these desks were on wheels for easy mobility, though many were hooked to power and communications wires making them more difficult to move on a daily basis. Many of them also went unused as our consultant’s increasingly went to the gemba (out on the road) and spent less time in the office.

Visual boards were set up on wall space that we had available. Being that we did not have space a lot of space on the walls, they were spread out and mixed up.

Our bookshelves are old, unmovable, unstable, disorganized and quite tall. They also took up valuable wall space which we wanted to use for visual management and as a Hoshin Kanri control center.

The office had numerous centralized office supply areas:

A window sill in the admin area.

A file cabinet in the middle of the room.

The bookshelves, in between the two.

And a printer cart.

AFTER:
These were some hefty goals for four people and two days, but the event was successful in reaching the goals and/or making way for the goals to be completed.

To achieve goals one and two we got rid of two of our seven stand-up desks. We pulled four of them into a pod in the center of the room and put one of them in the admin area for an extra to use as a work bench and/or desk when needed. We also moved the bookshelves to a different wall.

This left a lot of one wall (the largest we have) to make room for movable white board easels to use as our visual boards.

To increase mobility, each desk was equipped with a power strip that can be plugged into any where. An increased antenna was installed on our wireless router so that the computers did not need a wired connection.

We made a shelf to contain the centralized office supplies and placed them in the consultant’s area, accomplishing goal #5. We also protected the internet routers.

Here is what our office looks like now:

Action items left:

- Finish building bookshelves out of pipe and joint material
- Put wheels on packing / shipping station

We freed up space, improved visibility and flexibility. And the best part is the lack of a "control center" for visual boards is no longer an excuse for not having Hoshin Kanri review sessions.

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The translation for Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management is complete! One week behind original plan, but we are on track for a ship date in early March. Here are a few excerpts of the wisdom and insight of Taiichi Ohno I thought you might find enjoy:

Chapter 9: Reduced Inventory, Increased Work in Process

Just as in the example of the press earlier, the calculation tells you that it costs less to produce 10,000 than to produce 1,000 pieces so they keep the machine fully utilized. Then they run out of places to put things. They have no space unless they build a warehouse, so they build a warehouse. Once they have a warehouse they will keep building parts they will not sell just because their calculations tell them they are producing the parts at a low cost. Eventually as both the variety and volume of parts increase, they build racks in the warehouse to hold these parts. And now the moment we’ve all been waiting for, they install a computer system that will retrieve these parts from the warehouse without error, at the push of a button. Why do they go to such lengths to add cost to the parts they think they made so inexpensively?

Chapter 14: Do Kaizen When Times Are Good

I will say this again: the only way to generate a profit is to improve business performance and profit through efforts to reduce cost. This is not done by making workers slave away, to use a bad expression from the olden days, or to generate a profit by pursuing low labor costs but by using truly rational and scientific methods to eliminate waste and reduce cost. I think this is the most important work that industrial engineers can do.

Chapter 19: Toyota Made the Kanban System Possible

What I was particularly worried about was the support of upper management for such a risky, unproven approach that was off the beaten track. They should have been too afraid to give permission, but I think one of the big forces behind the development of the Toyota System is the fact that Chairman Eiji Toyoda and the late Advisor Shoichi Saitoh let me try this to my heart’s content.

If I had not been at Toyota Motor Company, I think another company would never have let me try this, so Toyota made the completion of this system possible. Today it is called the Toyota System but I think it was around 1961 or 1962 that this name was adopted. Before that since it was so risky and we were afraid that one mistake could lead to the company going out of business, so we had called it the Ohno System.

Order your copy of Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management today.

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On the way to the gemba this morning I heard the NPR report on American suit manufacturer Joseph Abboud on the rental car radio. Here is the transcript on the NPR website, titled Suit Maker Goes 'Lean' to Keep Jobs in U.S.

The report gave me three thoughts.

First, it was good to hear jobs being kept in the United States through Lean manufacturing. Second, it was good to hear the words "Lean manufacturing" on the morning news on national radio. But somehow, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Sure enough, the story ended with the follwing:

So far, the Joseph Abboud formula seems to be successful. Last year, the factory increased production, and sales are up 15 percent. In a world where pressure from low-wage labor is intense, Sapienza expects the strategy to work for five years.

So Lean manufacturing is a strategy that will work for five years. After that, move to a low cost country?

After that, he says the company will have to change further to stay competitive.

That sounds ominous. Why wait five years to "change further" unless you by change you mean "change to a lowest labor cost strategy"?

The whole idea of Lean manufacturing a.k.a. Toyota Production System a.k.a. kaizen + respect for people is that you are continuously changing and improving in the struggle to remain competitive. Don't wait five years for the next buzzword fix.

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By Brad Schmidt

Here are some highlights from the Japan Kaikaku Experience we just completed.

Toyota was quite amazing. They are now doing full kitting on sections of their assembly line. The kit carts go down the line with the car and then come back up empty to be filled with parts. This way the kitting is linked to the assembly and there are only bins of bolts and nuts on the line. This is new as of Jan 2007.

We toured Toto's "toilet tank line". The factory was decorated in a traditional Japanese style. They even had straw around chemical tanks to make it feel more homey. They have another plant in Shanghai making the same tanks and their cost in Japan is lower!! We had the plant manager take questions for about 1.5 hours which was very rewarding. The best thing about Toto was that they had this "free and fun" spirit that others didn't. The plant manager was saying it's a tough line to walk when they want to reduce costs (reduce headcount) and still keep their fun atmosphere which they know is unique.

After each visit we a) talked about what we saw that we liked, b) what is the thinking behind what we saw and c) how would that thinking manifest itself at our own company. I was very pleased with the results of our conversations and a number of the participants started getting their kaikaku (mental breakthroughs) right at Day 1.

Here is our schedule of our latest public trips. I hope to see all of you on a Kaikaku trip soon!

Posted by at 9:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Modern marketing gurus will tell you that in order to build customer loyalty you need customers to develop a deep, emotional attachment to the brand. One of the ways this is done is by telling engaging stories about the brand. Toyota seems to have gotten this memo, and when it comes to building customer loyalty they're starting young.

Toyota has built a kuruma kodomo site (Car Kids Site) which attempts to educate kids and future Toyota customers by in the sections called What kind of company is Toyota Motors?, How Are Automobiles Made?, Environmentally Friendly Automobiles Manufacturing and People Friendly Automobile Manufacturing.

There is information here that is interesting for kids aged six through thirty six, thanks to the off-beat humor in the animations in the How Are Automobiles Made? section. The yellow-faced alien is the child while the pale-faced aliens are meant to be Toyota new product development and planners. Here is a sample of the dialog from the Product Planning animation:

Planner (R side): The meeting is about to begin. Please take a seat.
Kid: What?
Planner (R side): We will begin the “What kind of car should we build?” meeting.
Planner (L side): Stand at attention. Bow. Be seated.
Planner (R side): Please report the results from your research on ideas for a new car.
Planner (L side): Yes. First, we investigated what kinds of cars are needed. Second, we investigated how cars are being used.
Kid: [thinks] They all have the same face…
Planner (L side): Then, we investigated popular trends and the lifestyles of our customers.
Planner (R side): What is the best kind of car, for the people who will use it?
Kid: [thinks] They have the same face…
Planner (middle): We have these results about people’s tastes.
Planner (R side): By the way, what is your opinion?
Kid: [nervous]
Planner (L side): You haven’t said a word yet.
Kid: [nervous]
Planner (middle): I would really like to hear your opinion.
Kid: [nervous] M.. may I ask a question?
Planner (L side): Please, please.
Kid: Why do you all have the same face?
Planner (R side): It’s true. Why do you have the same face as me?
Planner (middle): What about you? Why do you have my face?
Planner (L side): Which one is my real face? ^X@#!!?
Kid: [thinks] Didn’t they notice this before..?
Planner (R side): We will now begin the “Why do we all have the same face?” meeting.
Kid: [thinks] Enough already!!

There is a "virtual factory tour" here if you like this sort of animation. The following sequences are available for viewing, from planning through manufacturing and sales.

From top to bottom (ignoring the blue and green letters), the links to the animations are:

- Planning
- Design, Prototyping
- Various Testing
- Introduction
- Stamping
- Welding
- Painting
- Making engines & drive train
- Assembly
- Inspection
- Delivery

In this animation sequence, a small group of elementary or kindergarten students (rabbits + alien) come to tour the assembly line, only to switch places with the factory workers who decide that they want to do the tour themselves, leaving the TPS kids to work on the assembly line. What follows is a series of lessons in how the assembly line operates. See if you can understand what is going on.

The whole site is well done. I learned some things. The animations all have a humorous twist to them. I wonder if these were all approved by corporate PR? The humor is harmless, and aimed at children but certainly not common fare for a global industrial company.

Posted by at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier this month the Lean Insider attempted to answer the question Which Lean Book is Right for My Boss? These folks ought to have the answer, since Productivity Press has published the lion's share of important books on what we call Lean manufacturing today.

I have my favorite books on Lean, and I look forward to finding new books that will make it into this personal top 5 list. But who needs to read five books? If we would just implement 80% of what is in any one of these books we would far more good than getting a PhD in all things Lean.

Alan Mullaly is a CEO of a big American firm who is making his managers read books on Lean these days. The company is Ford Motor Company and the book is The Machine that Changed the World, according to word on the street.

Last month Mullaly made a surprise visit to Toyota in Japan, then both sides denied rumors of a tie-up. Today Toyota's chief Watanabe told the Nikkei Business Daily that Toyota would be open to some type of alliance with Ford, if only Ford asked. That is potentially big news for the automotive world. But it is not surprising.

Ford and Toyota are soul mates in a way. The leaders at Toyota owe something to Grandpa Ford. The people that are at the helm of Toyota today got where they were because they studied works like Henry Ford's Today and Tomorrow and took his sage advice. Here is a sampling from that book, sequenced as a Lean implementation guide:

1. First, create a plan (32)
2. Strive for simplicity (p. 13)
3. Make cleanliness a must in all areas (p. 60)
4. Constantly perform experiments (p. 17)
5. Measure work scientifically and work to make things take less time (p. 81)
6. Put people and tools in the sequence operation to minimize travel (p. 80)
7. Use standardization to strengthen processes and to drive out waste (p. 49)
8. Mistake proof designs (p. 67)
9. Automate those process that you can (p. 90)
10. Create opportunities for people to think (p. 248-250)

This is Henry Ford circa 1926, folks. It's spooky.

Do just eight of these things. If safety, quality, delivery and cost have not gotten significantly better for you as a result, I will gladly stop by and give you another 10 ideas for you to try. And I'll probably just get them out of Henry Ford's book.

Posted by at 12:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

This is a question I have most often heard from European engineers, or from people in other countries who are working with extremely high volume light assembly operations, usually following some teaching about just in time production or Standard Work:

"What do you think about the rabbit chase system?"

I don't like the rabbit chase system at all. I would rather have people try the rabbit system, as well as Standard Work in u-cells or straight lines, whichever made sense, and compare the results. But if asked, I will explain that the rabbit chase does not seem Lean to me at all.

The rabbit chase system, first of all, involves each worker doing all operations in a cell from beginning to end, "chasing" each other around and around as they work in the same cell. I don't know where the "rabbit" piece comes from.

The advantages stated for the rabbit chase are that it is easy to add or subtract people from the line to increase output, and that you do not need to balance the line because people self-balance as they develop a pace. In addition, each person could gain a sense of satisfaction from learning how to operate each process.

One of the main reasons that I have seen the rabbit chase performed is that the line speed or takt time for that cell is much too fast to do anything other than race to keep up. In some cases there would be more time waste in hand-offs and than in actual value added work done. But in these cases the design of the equipment and the pacing of work itself needs to be reconsidered, and slowed down through duplication of cells and low cost equipment.

The hand-off approach that is the typical flow line or u-cell involves balancing cycle time between workers, and a clear definition of work sequence. Some raise the issue of timing of the hand-off but this is a non-issue if you allow one piece of Standard WIP.

In the rabbit chase full training needs to be done for entire process for each person, which is a good thing if you can do it, but more practically the u-cell allows you to cross train step by step.

In the rabbit chase each person must check their own quality, or perhaps rely on an end-of-line inspection, while in Standard Work the quality is built-in through in-process checks by the person doing the work as well as verification and feedback by the downstream person upon hand-off.

In the case of the rabbit chase it would seem like there is the possibility of interference between one person and the next, if the speed difference between workers stacked up over time.

Standard Work forces you to document a repeatable work sequence for each person that is based on takt time and while this is not always easy, it is an important discipline and the foundation of kaizen through the removal of variations in cycle time, making the work easier, low cost automation, etc.

No doubt I am understating the benefits of the rabbit chase system, since I have undone far more of them than I have implemented. Feel free to comment in defense of the rabbit chase, as I could use the education.

Whichever way you prefer, do an experiment to try it the other way. If you don't like the results keep trying until you get the results you need. Just don't say "I told you it wouldn't work" and revert back to today's proven method, which you need to think of as the "worst ever". That's kaizen way.

Posted by at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I would like to say thank you to everyone who has been placing advance orders for Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management, coming out in March 2007.

Here is a sneak preview from the book, a short passage from Chapter 37: Follow the Decisions that Were Made, which I translated today:

"There is something called Standard Work, but standards should be changing constantly. Instead, if you think of the standard as the best you can do, it’s all over. The standard is only a baseline for doing further kaizen. It is kai-aku if things get worse than now, and it is kaizen if things get better than now. Standards are set arbitrarily by humans, so how can they not change?"

I found it quite delightful. I hope you enjoy it.

Posted by at 10:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

There is a very interesting discussion over at the Lean blog today in the post To Merge or Not To Merge...Lean & TPS. There were nine reader comments as of tonight, with many good viewpoints on the question of whether the articles on "lean manufacturing" and "Toyota Production System" should be merged as Wikipedia entries.

They should not.

The first is a descriptive label for the second, and a poor one at that. The second is still evolving, and will outlive the moniker of "lean".

A bit of historical perspective:

About three decades ago QC Circles which Deming helped launch in Japan, and which survive as a vital part of the Toyota Production System to this day, became TQC and then was imported back into the United States at TQM. It was a great system. It was not implemented well at all in most cases. It was the tusk of the elephant.

Two decades ago the West saw what Toyota was doing and understood it as "jut in time". Again, most implementations of just in time left a bitter taste in people's mouthes. That was the trunk of the elephant.

Then the buzz about "kaizen" started between 15 and 20 years ago, depending on which guru you credit with bringing it to the Western consciousness. Great stuff, again but just the ear of the elephant.

Others latched on to "kanban" as an early, if incomplete descriptor of the Toyota Production System. I heard this story, tragicomic as it is, from a very senior west coast Lean practitioner named Mike who attended a seminar with Taiichi Ohno, one of the very few that he gave on American soil. It was organized by a company called Productivity, who have done many great things for learning about TPS. The topic was "kanban", because this is what the organizer at Productivity understood the Toyota Production System to be at that time. According to Mike, Taiichi Ohno's presentation went something this:

"Here is a kanban card. Here is another kanban card."

What a phenomenal waste. All because we asked a brilliant man to tell us about the wonders of the elephant, but since we only knew the elephant by it's tail, we insisted that he teach about the thin leathery swishy bit.

So what will Lean manufacturing look like to us 10 years from now?

We are debating the wrong things. To extend the metaphor, we are not interested in elephants, but in herds of elephants, entire ecosystems on the savanna, the entire cycle of life and death.

We should never stop exploring things that are bigger than us, and by giving complex things simple names in an effort to understand them, we risk being intellectually lazy.

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I am about 84% through my first pass at translating Taiichi Ohno's book Gemba Keiei into what will become Workplace Management. This puts me just a bout a week behind plan.

About halfway through I began clocking myself, and I was shocked to find that it is taking between 6 and 12 minutes per Japanese page. As Ohno said, the standard time should be the shortest time.

Why the spread? I should look at the variables such as time of day, temperature, noise level, translating time elapsed, and blood caffeine level. Sounds like a six sigma project for someone.

If I chose to make the time, I would do a fish bone diagram and an A3 on it, but that would keep me away from translation. Excuse? Yes. A kaizen topic for another day.

There are also occasional debates with myself over the question of voice, or writing style that stop my fingers for a few minutes. Should a particular awkward sentences by Ohno be left awkward to get a better sense of the style of the man, or should I condense and polish it? You will have to read the book to find out how these debates turned out.

Ohno's ideas are not difficult to understand. But he can be hard to translate. Some of his sentences take nearly half of a page, and you can see the stream of his thought developing as his words are being recorded. The ideas are important, the delivery is genuine and unpolished.

The biggest influence on my translation speed is probably the "stare at the wall" factor so commonly cited in creative, or so-called knowledge work. I come across a particular word or phrase, think about the best way to put it into English, and think... as minutes pass by.

In editorial news, there will be 38 chapters to the book instead of the 37 in the Japanese version or the 36 chapters that the previous English translation had. One of the chapters that did not make it into the previous version will be included, and chapter 36 from the Japanese version will be split in two.

I will update the revised chapter titles, etc. soon.

Posted by at 6:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I would like to recognize a few fellow bloggers who consistently share genuine events and lessons from Lean manufacturing experiences on their gemba.

Mike Wroblewski has promised to return to more active blogging with a post last week. Looking forward to more soon, Mike.

Joe Ely's blog Learning About Lean tends to have thoughtful and sincere insights from the front lines of Lean manufacturing implementation. Joe Ely has is also back after a long hiatus, so visit his blog and encourage him to keep up the good work.

Elizabeth Seyler is a relatively new voice, with My Journey as Lean Champion. She has fresh takes on real life Lean manufacturing implementations, with kaizen summaries covering why was it done, what was done, lessons learned, what were the results, visual controls and metrics, and team thoughts. She bravely invites you to contact her to share ideas, struggles etc. so please give her your support

My favorite post of hers is Value Stream Mapping in Engineering. Here is a snippet:

LESSONS LEARNED

* It is worth shutting down Engineering for 6hrs in a day to focus and keep focus on the current and future state.
* Team buy in is key to successful implementation of lean changes.
* 30/60/90 days actions must be concise and measurable.
* Defining value added and non value added work within Engineering environment must be done carefully as people do not really grasp the idea.

Well done. Post that on your engineering manager's wall.

Posted by at 9:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I came across a new quote from Taiichi Ohno recently. It was in Japanese, and may not be new to the world, but I can't recall seeing it in English before. I think it nicely captures the idea of kaizen and respect for people, which are at the heart of the Toyota Production System.

"In a company when there is no race to get each person to add their good ideas to the work they do, I think this ruins people. Your improvements make the job easier for you, and give you time to make further improvements. Unlike in the [Charlie] Chaplin movie where people are treated as parts of a machine, the ability to 'add your creative ideas and changes to your own work' is what makes it possible to do work that is worthy of humans."

This is from the book ズバリ現場のムダどり事典 ― トヨタ生産方式の実践哲学 (Encyclopedia of Shop Floor Waste Elimination - The Practical Philosophy of the Toyota Production System) by Hitoshi Yamada, a former journalist who knew Taiichi Ohno. Yamada now is an author with a successful consulting practice mimicking the message and demanding style of his teacher. For what it's worth, here is the original Japanese:

企業内でも同様であって，一人ひとりの仕事に，いかに知恵をつけさせるかの競争がないと，その人自身をダメにしてしまうのではないか．工夫の中から，自分で仕事に余裕を持つ，そして，また工夫する．人間を，機械の一部のようにとらえた，あのチャップリンの映画と異なって，「自分で，自分の仕事に創意と工夫を加える」，そこに人間らしい仕事ができるのです．

The race or competition to get each person to add their good ideas (いかに知恵をつけさせるかの競争) is not a race between workers for good kaizen suggestions, it is a race with the managers and their workers on one side and the competitive forces in the world on the other side. It is a competition about how quickly you can get each person to use their minds creatively to improve their work. It's a race to get people to think.

Ohno is making a powerful statement here that if you do not challenge people to use their minds and improve their work, you are dehumanizing them. No wonder he was famous for yelling at managers who were slow to change.

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I heard this in a meeting today "When times are tough you make better decisions." I wonder if this is true. They say that necessity is the mother of invention and this means something similar.

A common Toyota saying is 「困らなければ知恵が出ない」 (komaranakereba chie ga denai) which means "You won't use your brains unless you have problems." Ohno used this title for one of the chapters in Gemba Keiei titled Your Wits Don't Work Until You Feel the Squeeze in this blog.

Harvard Business School Professor John Kotter wrote in Leading Change that the first step in a successful transformation is to create a sense of urgency.

On the other hand Taiichi Ohno also wrote in Gemba Keiei to "do kaizen when times are good" because in tough times you may be forced to cut the muscle and not just the fat.

So one of the central challenges of becoming Lean is how to create a sense of "tough times" even when times are good, and to use the truly tough times to focus your thinking and use your brains to make tough decisions and improvements, free of distractions and "happy" decisions you can make when you are making lots of money.

What do you think? When times are tough, do you make better decisions? Or do people make short-term decisions which are not better?

Posted by at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

General Motors Chief Executive Rick Wagoner has been in the news this week with fighting words:

“I like being No. 1, and I think our people take pride in it,” Wagoner said this week. “It's not something we're going to sit back and let somebody else pass us by.”

We are talking here about being the number one producer of automobiles by volume and not number one by reputation, quality, profit or growth. The article quotes Mr. Wagoner as saying that GM still has production capacity. This makes me worried for GM. They do not have a problem with supply, they have a problem with demand.

I am in the middle of translating Taiichi Ohno's Gemba Keiei into English at the moment and many times he says "We do not make what will not sell." What Ohno is saying is not that Toyota never builds an automobile before they have a firm sale with a live human customer, but that the processes in their factories and their supply chains operate on a pull system and that no production is authorized without the downstream process (the customer) consuming the part and giving a pull signal.

This is called the downstream pull system. This is such a simple theory that many manufacturers who learn it mistakenly think that they do it. Of the automotive manufacturers, only Toyota has insisted on a pull system for decades and built it into how they sell and build cars. This and their relentless focus on kaizen to reduce cost and improve quality is why Toyota is in a position to become number one, and not because they are building factories faster than anyone else.

Mr. Wagoner fails to understand that the goal for the General Motors Corporation is absolutely positively definitely and without a doubt not to remain in the number one spot on the basis of the number of automobiles produced in one year. Unless all of these vehicles are sold, and unless the company is profitable and is generating free cash flow as a result, being number one is pointless for GM. Toyota understands this, and that is why they will displace GM as number one. That is also why Toyota is playing down this issue.

Posted by at 8:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

From time to time we get e-mails asking for recommendations on books or articles to read for people who are just starting out learning about Lean manufacturing and how the Toyota Production System applies to their business. The reading list section of our website sorely needs to be updated, as there have been many good books on Lean in the past years.

I have not read many of the new books on Lean. I am still finding delight in the old books. Here are my top 5 lean manufacturing books for beginners:

1. Of course at the top of my list is Taiichi Ohno's Gemba Keiei. This is the Japanese version, not the out-of-print English translation, or the new translation which we are working on currently. This one book teaches a lot of valuable lessons.

2.The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer by Jeffrey Liker does a great job of telling through stories and illustrations who Toyota is today and covering a broad range of beliefs, principles, mindsets, tools and behaviors that make them a great company. The Toyota Way Fieldbook is a companion to this that I personally found a bit disorienting at times, perhaps it attempts to serve too diverse an audience or serve as a field book for too wide a set of ideas, but it is a solid reference.

3.Toyota Production System by Yasuhiro Monden. This book covering the theory and nuts and bolts is by a Japanese professor who has had a long relationship with people at Toyota, thinks clearly and writes well. It's not a quick or easy read, but worth reading until you understand it.

4.Today and Tomorrow by Henry Ford is more than just an antidote to the heavy emphasis on Toyota and Japanese authors. Ford is a genius and has some genuinely great insights in this book. This is one of the starting points of Lean thinking and it is important to read Ford with an open mind, as eagerly as we might read the exciting bestseller business books of the moment.

5.The Sayings of Shigeo Shingo by Shigeo Shingo is interesting because it helps get us in the mind of one of the most important industrial engineers of the last half century and a vital contributor to the development of Lean manufacturing, and because most of his techniques have been explained better by later authors who learned from him. The reading can be awkward at times due to the translation but the ideas come through clearly and is worthwhile.

These five may not be a good place to start for everyone. It depends on what your role and goal are. I certainly don't mean to snub any of the authors who have made valuable contributions to the understanding of the Toyota Production System, but these are the top 5 for the moment.

What are the top 5 Lean manufacturing books that you recommend to people who are starting out? What is your latest favorite? What is the one book you would tell someone to read to learn more about Lean?

Share your thoughts in the comment section below. I am sure there are many people who read this who would appreciate them.

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Today's news that Wal-Mart is using scheduling software to wring further productivity improvements out of their workers has been well blogged about over at Evolving Excellence in Wal-Mart Worhips the False God and also at the Lean Blog in Wal-Mart Scheduling and Respect for People.

From today's Wall Street Journal article titled Wal-Mart Seeks New Flexibility in Worker Shifts:

A company using these fine-tuned programs might start the day with a few employees on hand at many stores, bring in a bunch more during busy midday hours, and gradually pare down through the day before bulking up for the evening rush.

Imagine the workers at Wal-Mart lining up like day laborers in preparation for peak shopping, only to be told "there's no more work for you" and be sent home shortly after the shopping crowd dies down, and you will get a fairly accurate picture of what this means.

With Wal-Mart's reputation for nurturing their people and their suppliers these sorts of efforts at reducing labor cost and improving customer satisfaction (since when has that been a Wal-Mart selling point?) make me skeptical.

From purely academic point of view, Wal-Mart's use of software to schedule their labor and the clout they have to actually do this has resulted in an impressive advancement in the application of a particular Lean principle: just in time. Wal-Mart will be able to employ the people they need, when they need them, in the number they need. However Wal-Mart has solved the wrong problem.

Just in time production, which is a pillar of Lean manufacturing, requires the foundation of stable work flow and this is achieved in part by heijunka (production smoothing or the averaging of both the mix and the volume). The foundation of the Toyota Production System house is heijunka.

Part of heijunka is having a certain logical amount of finished goods in order to buffer against the day to day swings in customer demand, and pull begins at these points. Trying to do heijunka without this requires capacity that is infinitely flexible, or in the case of fixed assets they must be set at the maximum level. Since labor is not a fixed asset, it can be flexed with changes in demand if the demand cannot be smoothed perfectly.

How does a company like Toyota flexibly manage their workforce when there are demand swings? Traditionally this was done in part through seasonal workers from the area (typically farmers and housewives) working the factories during the busy season. Today Toyota in Japan has been criticized for relying increasingly on "permanent temporary" workers to keep costs low as well as flexible, the the extent that it has been called "human kanban" implying on-demand labor, or even a disposable resource. But that is nothing compared to what Wal-Mart is planning.

On second look the elimination of hours of manual scheduling using software is a legitimate improvement. But Wal-Mart took it a step too far and used what should be a tool as a weapon against their people. A change is not kaizen unless it both reduces cost and is gentle to the people affected.

Wal-Mart is treating their people as if they were non-human resources to be optimized, even at a significant cost to human happiness. If Wal-Mart's real goal is to improve the customer experience, they should try harder to level their demand by creating incentives to shop at off-peak times or to reduce the labor required per customer served, rather than jerking their workers around.

News like this makes me glad that there are active labor unions in the U.S.

Posted by at 9:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

In his New Year's address Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe positions 2007 as a foundation building year. He acknowledges both that Toyota sees not only strong growth in demand for their products but also fierce competition. He calls out not only for innovation but also sticking to the basics:

To that end, Toyota must not only focus its technology development on the environment, safety and energy, but must also remain an exemplary manufacturing company that implements thorough measures concerning quality, cost competitiveness and human resources development. I also want Toyota to be a company imbued with vitality and dignity.

From the point of view of the further advancement of Lean manufacturing, the following is interesting:

In Japan, upgrading of the production lines at the Takaoka Plant will be completed. We are positioning the plant to become Toyota's base for innovative manufacturing in Japan, employing Toyota's most-advanced technologies and leading other plants around the world.

I will look forward to seeing those upgrades at Takaoka. The following statement takes the concept of just in time or "what it is needed, when it is needed in the amount needed" to the next logical extension:

Based on the concept of "the right vehicle for the right place at the right time," Toyota is committed to developing environmental technologies and rolling out environmentally considerate vehicles that are suited to the infrastructure of each region and meet the needs of customers.

Watanabe quotes Sakichi Toyoda, founder of the Toyota Group: