Gemba Keiei by Taiichi Ohno

The Toyota Production System is Practice, Not Theory

Pete Abilla from the Shmula blog said in a comment posted to our blog recently: During my short time at Toyota, I learned this lesson well: we were always encouraged to "try and see" -- which meant that we should try new ways of doing things to see if they more>>

The Essence of Shop Floor Management

Chris Schrandt is a Gemba guy from Toyota who has wealth of experience in quality management and TPS. He had several great quotes during a problem solving class today, and this one about exposing problems struck me as particularly worth sharing: "If you have to ask, you don't have shop more>>

Taiichi Ohno's Revolution of Awareness

Very early in the book Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management the architect of the Toyota Production System calls for "a revolution of awareness". He proceeds to talk about misconceptions and false beliefs of various types that people have, as he tells stories and explains parts of the Toyota system. Although the more>>

Habituation , Sensitization and Being Yelled At By Taiichi Ohno

Neuroplasticitiy is the ability of the human brain to rearrange its synaptic networks based on experience. This primarily affects the hippocampus, the region of the brain playing a key role in memory. In turn, memory affects behavior. Human behavior affects the majority of things that concern us on a day more>>

We Are Now Shipping Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management

Sweet relief, the books have arrived. Thanks for your patience. We've set up a flow line to pack and ship, paced at about 90 seconds per order. Now don't everybody order at once. We value heijunka around here. more>>

Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management, First Copy

We finally have in hand one copy of Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management. The proof looks fine so the gluing of the binding to the insides is ongoing for the rest of the lot. We are standing by to ship them out as soon as we receive them. Here is some more>>

Found: Ohno's Printed Words. Seeking: the Binding

This is an update on the printing of Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management. We've located the Ohno books and they are in stacks on the printing floor, waiting for binding. When we sent the file for the cover, we got the size wrong so they didn't print it. We screwed up. more>>

The Value of Figuring It Out for Yourself

There is a curious mention of Nissan purchasing an American automobile factory before World War II and moving it to Japan in chapter 21 of Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management: Before the war Nissan had purchased an American factory and moved it all over to Japan, and there were even engineers more>>

We Have No Idea When Your Books Are Shipping

That is essentially what our printer told us today when we inquired on the status of the Taiichi Ohno books. I won't name the company that is involved, but we're looking for another printing and fulfillment partner. The books are in a happy place called "fulfillment" where we are told more>>

Translation for Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management is Complete, Part 2

The translation, layout and pre-production for Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management has been completed. This week we mailed out 10 review copies to a diverse collection of authors, teachers and implementers of the Toyota Production System. We are very thankful for their help and we will post their review and feedback more>>

Translation for Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management is Complete, Part 1

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 more>>

How Can They Not Change?

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 more>>

Workplace Management Translation Update, January 2007

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 more>>

Words of Taiichi Ohno Sensei, Part 4: It's a Race to Get People to Think

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 more>>

Workplace Management Pre-Orders and Publication Update!

December 14, 2006 - Mukilteo, Washington U.S.A. Here is an update on the publication of Workplace Management, Taiichi Ohno's classic book about how Lean manufacturing (the Toyota Production System) was developed at Toyota Motor Corporation between 1950 and 1989. As things are proceeding we hope to have it ready to more>>

Gemba Keiei by Taiichi Ohno, Chapter 37: The Standard Time Should be the Shortest Time

"Speaking of standards, time study is another thing everyone gets wrong." The typical time study is based on taking 10 times and setting an average time as the standard. Ohno says this is very bad because if you are watching someone do something 10 times and they are doing it more>>

Gemba Keiei by Taiichi Ohno, Chapter 36: Only the Gemba Can Do Cost Reduction

Taiichi Ohno begins the chapter by demonstrating the Toyota philosophy of "aim for 10X improvement, not 10% improvement". He instructed Human Resources to give the shop floor 10 people even though they had asked for 100 people. Let them struggle and they will figure out how to get it done more>>

Gemba Keiei by Taiichi Ohno, Chapter 35: The Monaka System

How many Japanese words do we have in the Lean lexicon? Do we really need another? It's a rhetorical question, but would you rather have "sweet azuki bean jam wafer system"? I thought not. "Replaceable core system" also works, if you must. However, Taiichi Ohno gives us the monaka system. more>>

Gemba Keiei by Taiichi Ohno, Chapter 34: The Pitfall of Cost Calculation

In this chapter Taiichi Ohno talks about the pitfalls of using cost calculation to justify new equipment purchases and also decisions to scrap or replace equipment based on depreciation. "Whenever we need to make a decision, we end up doing something like cost calculation. Cost calculation is not wrong, but more>>

Gemba Keiei by Taiichi Ohno, Chapter 33: The Difference Between Production Engineering and Manufacturing Engineering

Taiichi Ohno begins the chapter by saying "We think of production engineering and manufacturing engineering as distinct things. We distinguish manufacturing engineering as the work to determine the method of manufacturing and production engineering as how to actually accomplish that method of manufacturing." Ohno uses the example of a scissors more>>

Taiichi Ohno's Book "Workplace Management" Returns to Print in 2007

Almost two years ago I set out to read Taiichi Ohno's recently reissued book Gemba Keiei (Workplace Management) in Japanese and summarize one chapter per week. My goal was to have all 37 chapters posted here by September 2005. Well no plan goes according to plan and here we are more>>

Gemba Keiei by Taiichi Ohno, Chapter 32: Operational Availability vs. Rate of Operation

In this chapter Taiichi Ohno introduces another concept that is mixed up by people. It is the difference between operational availability and rate of operation. I introduced this concept in some depth in a previous post on this blog, and Taiichi Ohno does the same in the first few pages more>>

Gemba Keiei by Taiichi Ohno, Chapter 31: There is a Correct Sequence to Kaizen

Taiichi Ohno explains in this chapter that there is a correct sequence to kaizen, and it is as follows: 1) Manual work kaizen 2) Equipment kaizen 3) Process kaizen "Manual work kaizen means thinking of better ways of using the existing equipment. Rather than making tools (equipment), it is important more>>

Gemba Keiei by Taiichi Ohno, Chapter 30: Seiri Seiton Seiso Seiketsu Shitsuke

"Seiri (Sorting) is throwing out what you don't need and Seiton (Straighten) is arranging items so that they are ready when you want them. Arranging things neatly is only Seiretsu (lining up in rows) and proper shop floor management requires Seiri and Seiton." Taiicho Ohno goes on to tell a more>>

Gemba Keiei by Taiichi Ohno, Chapter 29: Become a Reliable Boss

"I never get angry at the workers. However, I will get very angry at supervisors and above." Some people say that Taiichi Ohno was not a very nice man. Ohno had a reputation for being very tough on his students, and some even call him a monster. I have never more>>

Gemba Keiei by Taiichi Ohno, Chapter 28: Wits Don't Work Until You Feel the Squeeze

“When I’m sitting in the board room I have no idea what’s happening on the gemba.” Taiichi Ohno begins, and proceeds to tell the story of what would happen when he was sitting in another office, Production Control. When his eyes met the eyes of a female office worker she more>>

Words of Taiichi Ohno Sensei, Part 3: The Top 8 Pearls of Wisdom on Kaizen

Taiichi Ohno loved wordplay. He would take a few choice Japanese words and pack in as much kaizen wisdom as he could. He chose his words carefully, even though in much of his writing he was informal and direct, and not highly articulate. During the years when I was an more>>

Words of Taiichi Ohno Sensei, Part 2: Foreword from the First Textbook on the Toyota Production System

This is an image of the first textbook ever written on the Toyota Production System. The title reads Toyota Style Production System – The Toyota Method. The Toyota Education Department published this in January 1973. Taiichi Ohno wrote the foreword to this book. The foreword is titled Practice, Not Theory. more>>

Words of Taiichi Ohno Sensei, Part 1: "I Never Said There Were 7 Types of Waste"

One has to be careful these days when making statements about the origins of TPS and check the facts, or else be pinned to the mat for a count of three by the investigative tag-team of Art Smalley and Isao Kato. So I’ll confess to a terrible truth of Lean more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 27: We Can Still Do a Lot More Kaizen

Taiichi Ohno starts the chapter with the surprising statement “We have done a lot of rationalization on the production floor and we are near the limit. It’s becoming common sense that administrative processes still need a lot of rationalization, but we can still do a lot of kaizen on the more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 26: There Are No Supervisors at the Administrative Gemba

“Administrative work is done at the gemba just the same as the production gemba where we make things. The office is the administrative gemba.” Taiichi Ohno begins the chapter. Gemba is a Japanese word meaning “actual place”. In fact it is written gen-ba but pronounced more like gemba. "Gen" means more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 25: Work is a Game of Wits with Subordinates

Taiichi Ohno begins the chapter “In order to lead a large number of people in work, you have to be tough. But I think this is basically not a matter of giving orders or instructions, but a game of wits with subordinates.” Ohno says that when you give orders or more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 24: Fight the Robot Fad

“We only started talking about ‘reduced volume production’ after the 1973 oil shock. Prior to that we could sell everything we made so cost reduction for mass production was easier.” Ohno goes on to say that although many other industries learned to cut cost with reduced volumes, to this day more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 23: Producing at the Lowest Possible Cost

Taiichi Ohno starts the chapter by telling the story of when the President of Toyota, Mr. Ishida, was summoned to the National Diet and scolded by politicians for building passenger cars that were too expensive. Back then even the head of the Bank of Japan said that cars should not more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 22: Shut the Machines Off!

Taiichi Ohno starts by explaining the difference between an automatic loom “working” and “moving” or “running”. Working implies that jidoka prevents it from making defects. A machine “running” and producing defects is not a machine “working”. If the machine makes a defect, it should stop. The difference between automation and more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 21: Rationalization is Doing What is Rational

The title of this chapter is somewhat awkward. By another translation you could read it as "Improvement means doing what is rational" or "Kaizen means following reason". But here Taiichi Ohno is engaging in a bit of word play. The Japanese for rationalization, in literal translation means "make it fit more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 20: What I Learned About Forging Changeover from Toyota do Brasil

Taiichi Ohno begins the chapter by saying “In order to achieve Just in Time you need to solve your changeover problems and reduce lot sizes. Forging processes are the most difficult.” This chapter should really be titled “Toyota Learned How to Do Forging Changeovers in Brazil”. It’s an interesting story. more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 19: Toyota Made the Kanban System Possible

In this chapter Taiichi Ohno explains the origin and the conditions that resulted in the development of the kanban system at Toyota. In the beginning the machining process upstream would replenish what the assembly process downstream used. The kanban card was used as a production instruction ticket. It was still more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 18: Supermarket System

Taiichi Ohno starts out the chapter not quite having left the themes of his last two chapters behind. He describes how the jidoka idea that came from the Toyota textile business led to one operator running 20 or 30 machines. This thinking was transferred to the automotive side of Toyota's more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 17: The Goal - Improve Productivity Ten-Fold

Taiichi Ohno recounts when he first learned in 1937 that the American worker was 9 times more productive than the Japanese worker. Taiichi Ohno heard this from a Mitsubishi Electric factory manager who had recently returned from a tour of Germany and America. The 300 person factory in Germany had more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 16: Grandpa Sakichi's Jidoka Idea

I really enjoyed this chapter for a couple of reasons. First, Ohno uses the old-fashioned honorific for “grandpa” or “old man” when referring to Sakichi Toyoda in the title. There’s a certain warmth there and a reminder that born in 1912, Taiichi Ohno had the sensibilities and values of an more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 15: Just In Time

In this chapter Taiichi Ohno discusses “just in time” but spends very little time on how material and information flows in TPS and most of his time wondering about the origin of the English phrase. Toyota Production System has two pillars: autonomation (jidoka) and just in time but I realized more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 14: Do Kaizen When Times Are Good

In this brief chapter Taiichi Ohno emphasizes the need to do kaizen in order to be ready to compete with lowest cost production. When production volumes decrease, one strategy is to produce products with higher value added and higher margins. This strategy of moving up-market does not always work, so more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 13: Improve Productivity Even with Reduced Volumes

Taiichi Ohno pulls a lesson for Lean manufacturing out of the rice farming situation in the early 1980s in Japan. The government of Japan paid farmers to decrease the area used to cultivate rice in order to limit overproduction of rice. While it might seem like a good idea to more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 12: Agricultural People Like Inventory

Taiichi Ohno makes an interesting connection between the Japanese as historically an agricultural people and the fact that Japanese manufacturers seem to like inventory. Farmers growing rice are at the mercy of the weather. There are droughts and there are typhoons so it痴 best to grow and harvest as much more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 11: Wasted Motion is Not Work

In this chapter Taiichi Ohno talks about the importance of training your eyes to see the difference between wasted motion and value added work. Another theme is the way the words you use affect how you think and behave. An English example of this may be the difference between saying more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 10: The Misconception that Mass Production is Cheaper

"Another example of a misconception that becomes common sense," Taiichi Ohno begins "is the idea that mass production is cheaper so that by the same logic low volume production must cost more. I have seen many factories but very few examples where mass production reduced the cost. In most cases more>>

Mail for You, Mr. Ohno

We received a piece of mail for Taiichi Ohno at our address recently. It was junk mail (or a solicitation to advertise online with Yahoo! to be exact) but mail nonetheless. Here is what showed up on my desk. I am extremely honored that Yahoo! thinks Taiichi Ohno works at more>>

Gemba Keiei Chapter 9: Reduced Inventory, Increased WIP

"We reduced inventory" the manager of one company told Ohno, hoping for praise. This was raw material inventory so Ohno asked "Won't the lack of raw materials cause problems for production?" "Not at all" came the reply. Going to the factory Ohno sees increased work in process (WIP) inventory. They more>>

Gemba Keiei, Chapter 8: Limited Volume Production is to Produce at Low Cost

The title for this chapter is awkward in English. It comes from the problem of trying to translate the nuances of Japanese words that have the same sounds but different meaning due to an intentional replacement of one of the kanji (Chinese characters) to create a new word. Taiichi Ohno more>>

Gemba Keiei, Chapter 7: Don't Fear Opportunity Losses

While the point of this chapter is clear (see the title) it is not as well illustrated by examples as some of the previous chapters. The message here supports the message of the following chapter on limited volume production. Taiichi Ohno starts by talking about the difficulty of doing production more>>

Gemba Keiei, Chapter 6: The Blind Spot in Cost Calculation

Let's start off with a bit of background on the Toyota Production System (TPS) and what has come to be called Lean manufacturing in the West. One of the pillars of TPS as envisioned and developed by Kiichiro Toyoda, Taiichi Ohno, and Shigeo Shingo is the idea of Just in more>>

Gemba Keiei, Chapter 5: Misconceptions Hidden within Common Sense

This is a short chapter. The chapter seems to act as a thematic bridge. Taiichi Ohno begins by talking about the importance of making a mindset shift in order to achieve breakthrough kaizen results, and ends the chapter by talking about the misconception of economies of scale. In the chapters more>>

Gemba Keiei, Chapter 4: Go See What Didn't Work with Your Own Eyes

Taiichi Ohno starts this chapter by pointing out that it's relatively easy to convince the people on the Gemba (factory floor) by having them try the new way and see that is better than another way, but that this is harder to convince managers, senior managers, and supervisors. In disagreements more>>

Gemba Keiei, Chapter 3: Misconceptions Reduce Productivity

In this chapter Taiichi Ohno illustrates the idea that "misconceptions reduce productivity" by telling several stories from the Gemba at Toyota. The point Ohno makes in this chapter is that demonstrating the superiority of one piece flow is a simple thing, yet it something rarely seen on the Gemba. In more>>

Gemba Keiei, Chapter 2: If You Are Wrong, Admit It

In the second chapter Taiichi Ohno continues to gently lecture senior managers. He begins by answering the question of based on his earlier assumption "Why are we wrong half of the time?" by saying that our thinking is wrong. The word he uses to explain this is "misperception", "delusion" or more>>

Gemba Keiei, Chapter 1: The Wise Mend their Ways

Taiichi Ohno begins the chapter by saying that he doesn't believe it's easy to influence people on the Gemba to change. In order to get people to do kaizen, you need to convince them and help them understand. How are people convinced? There has to be some sort of reasoning more>>

Introducing Gemba Keiei by Taiichi Ohno

Taiichi Ohno is one of the founders of TPS along with Shigeo Shingo and members of the Toyoda family. Three of Mr. Ohno's major works on the Toyota Production System and kaizen have been translated into English. They are 'The Toyota Production System', 'Just In Time for Today and Tomorrow', more>>