How Toyota brought its famed manufacturing method to India | The Economic Times

See on Scoop.itlean manufacturing

“…Nakagawa, who has been a TPS practitioner for four decades, doesn’t believe in seeing things on his computer screen -he prefers to go where the action is. “Can a computer smell? Genchi Genbutsu is very important because only on-site will your sensory organs be alert – smell, sound, vision,” he says….”

Michel Baudin‘s insight:

Perhaps, Mr, Nakagawa has not heard of Google Nose, the app announced on April 1.

In all summaries,TPS has two pillars, but never the same. In this article, the pillars are “respect for people” and “continuous improvement.” To Ohno, they were Just-in-time (JIT) and Jidoka, with JIT covering production control, logistics, and supply chain management, while Jidoka was a complete approach to the engineering of production lines where humans interact with machines.

You could try to implement Ohno’s JIT and Jidoka without respect for people or continuous improvement, but it would not work well. Conversely, if all you focus on is respect for people and continuous improvement, you won’t get TPS either. You need both, and, perhaps, two pillars are not enough.

Broadly speaking, the two pillars in this article are about management; Ohno’s pillars, about technology. As TPS is based on the interplay of management and technology, perhaps these are its real “two pillars.”

See on economictimes.indiatimes.com