TBP: Toyota Business PracticeBy Jon Miller |Comments: 17
The Toyota Business Practice is old wine in new bottles. Granted it's very old, very good wine, but is nothing new. Peeling off the label will reveal the last decade's under-appreciated but full-bodied PDCA brand of problem solving. Lately many people have found the A3 label of problem solving to a refreshing take on PDCA. But it's all the same old wine. From a branding point of view, "the Toyota Way of Working" or "Toyota WOW" would have been cooler, but it was probably too close to Toyota Way itself. In any case, the 8 steps of the Toyota Business Process are:
Here is how this process would map to an A3 document for the purpose of problem solving, business planning or making a proposal. This is in itself just a slight variant of the QC Storyline of TQC.
Follow this process and you inevitably have kaizen. Here is a close up of the classic problem solving funnel. You can see how the first 5 steps or the Plan phase of the Toyota Business Process map to this funnel, with steps 6 - 8 being the Do, Check, Act portion of the PDCA cycle of continuous improvement.
トヨタの仕事の仕方8ステップ (the 8 steps of the Toyota way of working)
As a standard problem solving process, it is excellent and widely applicable. Inevitably "PDCA" alone was too vague. The Socratic teaching method and talk of "it takes 40 years to learn" at Toyota has given way to a more deliberate method of teaching this thinking process at Toyota, based on what I have seen. We could say the TBP is the result of clarify, break down, and so forth, applied to the teaching of PDCA. Sometimes I think the genius of the Toyota approach is that this process is so simple, obvious, and offensive to the intelligence and self-worth of most senior executives and go-getters out there that they close the book and say, "That can't be right. There must be more to it." Most people won't understand TBP or try it. You can't really understand it until you try it. So it comes back to a question of packaging and motivation. As far as additional resources for TBP... I am not sure you really need any. The book Extreme Toyota mentions TBP and has a few case studies and A3-type stories that follow this process, but not in great detail on the thinking and tools used. Managing to Learn by John Shook is also a good place to get a handle on the Toyota way of working. Read some classic Deming on PDCA and you can't go wrong. The content of TBP is nothing proprietary so if people need more details on the 8 steps let me know and I'll see if we can't put together a PDF or something to download. Jon, Thanks, Poster: Andy Wagner | Post Date: February 23, 2009 5:56 PM Hi Andy, The original TBP is PDCA. If you mean Toyota documentation, it doesn't belong to us so I won't distribute it. However, I will continue working on a user-friendly e-handbook of sorts for problem solving that is basically TBP. Poster: Jon Miller | Post Date: February 23, 2009 6:31 PM Sir, I'm interested in your comments on TBP! Toyota set a good example for all successors! But CI is a forever topic, we all know every thinking need development! So if you can send me the contents of TBP, I will be very glad to learn and share it! Poster: Jianfei | Post Date: February 23, 2009 7:22 PM Jon, Luli Poster: Luli | Post Date: February 24, 2009 6:23 PM John, Poster: Stephen Wong | Post Date: February 28, 2009 6:19 AM Sir, Thanks a lot for such beautiful ideas.. Poster: Manoj | Post Date: March 12, 2009 10:09 AM Jon: I would greatly appreciate your putting together a PDF or something downloadable on the 8-step problem solving process. I think the first two steps in particular need to be made more specific and distinct. For instance: I've seen ambiguous references in other sources to both an "ultimate goal" and an "ideal situation" being identified in step 1 -- how do they differ?; I am not clear at all as to why "breakdown the problem" would apply to generic problem solving (I can only see its need in dealing with complex problems) or even how it is an act distinct from clarifying a problem -- I would normally think of breaking down a problem as part of clarifying it so as to better define what to tackle; it's not clear in which of these two steps one does such things as flow charting (or value stream mapping) and taking baseline measurements; how does the information one looks at/gathers/analyzes in step 1 differ from that in step 2?; etc. Poster: Simon Ellberger | Post Date: March 22, 2009 9:49 AM Hi Jon, I found your TBP perspective very interesting here thanks for sharing.. Im actually a certified instructor of TBP by the Toyota Institute in Japan. Im a trainer for Toyota cascading TBP throughout all levels and Ive been associated with Toyota (mostly TMMK) for the past 21 yrs. Ten of those years being an actual Group Leader in Production 1988-1998. I've was taught basic PDCA in the late 80's as well as Practical Problem Solving (the funnel approach above) in the 90's and now TBP in 2005 as it came out. I will have to say I'm impressed with TBP specifically step 2 allowing us to breakdown the problem in Step 2, which leads for a more efficient and effective Root cause analysis and countermeasure implementation in Step 4 and 5. It's definitely a different way to think and a discipline to tackle a smaller problem than a larger more value added problem in our minds. I also like the ability to embed Genchi Genbutsu in finding a process and point of occurrence of the smaller broken down problem allowing us to set target contributing to the Ideal Situation. I feel this thinking process has the ability to make a difference in key performance indicators (Q,S,P,C) within company's willing to embrace this "thinking" process. I especially love the drive and dedication elements added to give team members the ability to add "tangible actions" to their problem solving process in order to "live the Toyota Way"... I'm an advocate of TBP to say the least, and will continue to train in this methodology improving the way Toyota does business. Thanks again Jon for sharing. Tracey Richardson Poster: Tracey Richardson | Post Date: March 28, 2009 10:50 AM Hi Tracey, It's great to hear from you! I enjoyed visiting your blog and reading your articles. Please keep up the good work. Poster: Jon Miller | Post Date: March 28, 2009 4:50 PM I have a completed book of TBP (in PDF format).Please email me for request to download. More details and Hope be helpfull for your opinion. Poster: Ryke | Post Date: May 22, 2009 11:14 PM Dear Ryke, I'm interested in implementing TBP,i hope you dont mind to share the book to me Poster: Erick | Post Date: June 22, 2009 6:49 PM Dear Ryke, I'm interested in implementing TBP,i hope you dont mind to share the book to me Sunil Pantoji Poster: Sunil Pantoji | Post Date: July 14, 2009 1:03 AM Ryke: Poster: Victor Martinez | Post Date: July 15, 2009 7:18 AM Hi John. I like this approach to problem solving
We are so often results focused, and the result is sometimes all we see, but how we got the result in many cases is not recorded or understood, so we can’t repeat them.
I see this part a bit like a football game, win, lose or draw. The day after the game the manager sits down with the team to analyse what happened in the game. If the result was a win, what did we do well to get the win, if we understand how, then we can have a logical strategy to apply to the next game to get another win. If the game was a draw what went well and what didn’t go so well, what did we learn and what could we do differently in the next game to get the win. If we lost the game what did we do wrong, how we can learn from the mistakes, and what can we do differently next time to get a win. Keep checking the result and the process of how we got the results will in the end set you up for better success, and add the repeatability factor through a standard approach. Apply this logic to problem solving and get the repeated results that are sustainable. Steve Poster: Anonymous | Post Date: September 22, 2009 12:07 PM Thank you for the information Jon. Can you describe the points which distinguish step one from step two? I see step 1 (clarify) as taking the perceived problem and undertanding it and step 2 as identifying points in the process where the problem could originate. Poster: Jeremy Bradley | Post Date: September 23, 2009 9:30 AM what is the difference between tbp and DMAIC approach? Poster: nergis | Post Date: December 7, 2009 4:56 AM |
Jon,
I really enjoy your analysis of the Toyota System. The fact that you can translate the original ideas from the Japanese writing helps a lot. I would like to see your continuing ideas on the 8 steps, if you don't mind developing a download.
Thanks,
Les