The Dark Side of Lean

The Secret Lives of Toyota Term Employees, Episode 6

Tomorrow is Creative Idea Suggestion Submission Day What happens after a term employee at Toyota becomes a regular employee? Is this the happy ending when the assembly line workers finally feel the warm embrace of President Watanabe? Does repetition of the 60 second takt time scripted to a work sequence more>>

The Secret Lives of Toyota Term Employees, Episode 5

Do you live with the fear that your job may be gone tomorrow? Toyota group company workers do, according to an article titled Growing Reliance on Temps Holds Back Japan's Rebound in the Wall Street Journal on January 7, 2008. The central point of the article is this: One reason more>>

The Secret Lives of Toyota Term Employees, Episode 4

Somehow, I Will Get through This Week I have been reluctant to post Episode 4 in the Secret Lives of Toyota Term Employees because the continuing story of the Tahara plant worker Maruo is so bleak. Last week Kevin Meyer at the Evolving Excellence blog and Mark Graban at the more>>

The Secret Lives of Toyota Term Employees, Episode 3

The Road to Tahara Prison A Toyota term employee and blogger named Maruo wrote 72 posts over 4 months on his experience working at the Tahara plant. His blog is called Welcome to Tahara Prison (田原刑務所へようこそ). He signed up for a 6 month term at Toyota. All references to “Tahara more>>

The Secret Lives of Toyota Term Employees, Episode 2

How to Pass the Term Employee Job Interview at Toyota The website "The New - Ask the Term Laborer Porsche" (新・期間工ポルシェに訊け) offers a fascinating glimpse into the secret lives of Toyota term employees by giving tips and information to people who are thinking about going to work on contract for more>>

The Secret Lives of Toyota Term Employees, Episode 1

Kaizen and respect for people. These are the words under which Toyota presents itself as a company that builds cars by building people. Yet this is the ideal, and we know that there is always a gap between reality and the ideal. What is the reality of Toyota's labor policies? more>>

Tell Us Your Lean Failure Stories

Recently one of our consultants came back from a sales call having received the question from our prospective client "When has your firm failed in consulting engagements? Tell us your Lean failure stories." Not having served as long as some of the rest of us at Gemba (and without the more>>

Toyota Number One in the World... in Recalls?

Not two days after imploring everyone to do kaizen like Toyota, we're reminded that no matter how good you are at lean manufacturing, kaizen, and continuous improvement, if you focus too much on eliminating muda (waste) while ignoring muri (unreasonableness, overburden) you can fail as a business. A snippet of more>>

Layoffs, Strategy and the Bimodal Hump

If you haven't exercised your neck muscles lately, read the first few paragraphs of the article Short-Circuited: Cutting Jobs as Corporate Strategy and shake your head in disbelief as you scratch Circuit City off of your shopping list for a while. After the story of Circuit City and their egregious more>>

One More Reason Not to Shop at Wal-Mart

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 more>>

Toyota Botches Lean Implementation at Japan Post?

A Lean service implementation has been in progress for the last three years at Japan Post, the public sector entity that is Japan's postal service. Japan Post is slated to be privatized in 2007, and Toyota executives were involved in launching JPS or "Japan Postal System" a project to do more>>

That's Not Cost Reduction, That's Stealing

The September 4, 2006 Japan Times reports Toyota allies warned over low pay by Labor authorities in Japan. Twenty three Toyota suppliers in Toyoda, Japan have been caught cheating their Vietnamese workers of pay by paying below minimum wage. Two hundred workers have been underpaid by nearly $500,000 over 5 more>>

Lean Healthcare Plumbs New Depths at ?? Hospital

The news from Jean's workplace, where consultants have been giving Lean healthcare a bad name, has gotten worse. Jean writes: I think we, as a staff are beginning to feel like chicken pluckers in the Golden Plump Place where Faster is always better. The morale in our place of work more>>

When did Toyota Get to be a Company Like This?

Toyota does not sell cars because people crave their sleek design or because the Camry is a status symbol. People buy and drive Toyotas because they are reliable and they have a high resale value. They are well built and reasonably priced. What would happen if Toyota vehicles were suddenly more>>

Giving Lean Healthcare a Bad Name

We're giving Lean healthcare a bad name in Jean's world. Jean is a nurse at a hospital where Lean healthcare practices based on the Toyota Production System are being implemented. At Jean’s hospital, it sounds like they are making a mess of it. She found this blog through the article more>>

Five Practical Ways to Stay on the Sunny Side of Lean

It’s not easy to read so much about the dark side of Lean. I’ve received e-mails this week from readers who are upset that I would post attacks on Lean manufacturing and kaizen. It’s no fun to learn terrible things about your favorite production system, but growth and learning is more>>

Interview with Darius Mehri, Author of "Notes from Toyota-land"

Today we continue exploring the dark side of Lean as we interview Darius Mehri, author of Notes from Toyota-land. Darius is an American who spent three years working as an engineer in Japan at a Toyota group company. He changed the name of the company in his book to “Nizumi”. more>>

Lean Production Does Not Respect People

Many of those exposing the dark side of Lean production take aim at “Lean production” as defined in the book The Machine that Changed the World. This book compares the Japanese and U.S. automotive industries and identifies best practices. It claims that it is inevitable that all manufacturing eventually become more>>

Human Kanban

Kanban is a material and information flow management tool. They are typically cards attached to containers of parts. The cards contain information about the parts and these cards are reused, traveling with parts. Kanban are used to control the minimal amount of inventory in the system. It is based on more>>

War, Oil and Lean Production

Each day this week we will examine aspects of The Dark Side of Lean. Today’s theme is “War, Oil and Lean Production” – admittedly an extreme Left perspective based on Marxist thought and the examination of a murder-suicide at a Jeep factory in January 2005. Why should we spend any more>>

How to Give Lean Manufacturing a Bad Name

One way that is almost guaranteed to stop a Lean manufacturing effort in its tracks is for management to announce that Lean manufacturing will be used to eliminate jobs. It's hard to believe that anyone still does this, but the pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck said this in the January 12, 2006 more>>

Respect for People? Labor Unrest at Toyota Kirloskar

There has been labor unrest at the Toyota Kirloskar joint venture in Bidadi, India over the last week. Indian business news has covered these events, but there has been very little mention of it in American or Japanese news. On January 8th, 2005 fear of physical harm to people and more>>