Jun 23 2014
Ex-Toyota exec preaches production gospel to aspiring supplier | Automotive News
Paula Lillard is now the bright hope for nth/works. She has come to help instill the Toyota Production System — or TPS — for a supplier that urgently wants it.
Source: www.autonews.com
This article paints a picture of what implementing Lean is really all about. It starts from the business needs of a parts supplier to the household appliance industry that wants to move into auto parts, where tolerances are tighter.And implementation is centered around what Lillard calls giving the plant “a little TLC.”
According to the article, her first task was “to ask employees to write and create step-by-step instructions on how to do their jobs.” This is a far cry from all the nonsense about starting with 5S. It does not require value-stream maps, and it cannot be done in so-called “Kaizen events.”
Instead, it is patient work that requires time and perseverance.There is a TPS twist on work instructions — using A3 sheets posted above workstations rather than 3-ring binders on shelves — but such instructions have been recognized as essential since the 19th century, and have been part of the industrial engineering curriculum since its inception, decades before Toyota was started.
Yet, the article implies that a stamping parts manufacturer in the American Midwest survived for 70 years without them. Having seen many plants with non-existent or ineffective job instructions, I believe it, and it raises many questions.
June 24, 2014 @ 2:54 am
I think the task of having the employees write down their jobs does several things that can be built on subsequently. The first gain is employee involvement that sets up the servant leadership style of leadership. Second it shows that we are interested in what they have to say will use what they say as a basis to improve their effectiveness. Third it helps you gauge the level of experience, training and education level of each person so you can better customize the manner in which you interact with them going forward. Sounds like a pretty good idea to me….
June 24, 2014 @ 6:35 pm
Of course, it is a great idea. Getting it done, however, is not easy.
As the article said “A few years ago, Hudson was stunned to learn from an employee survey that one-fourth of his workers could not read or write.”
Illiterates won’t write instructions, nor read the ones anybody else writes. In many plants here in California, you find workers who may be well educated in their countries of origin but are less than fully proficient in English. And you have to figure out a way to provide job instructions that all will understand, a challenge that you usually meet with graphics and pictograms.
Where literacy is not an issue, you still have a management challenge. In many organizations, job security is a concern, operators prefer to keep part of their know-how secret, and are reluctant to document every step and make it easier for anybody else to take over.
You may have a hard time convincing a machinist who has worked on the same lathe for 15 years to write down instructions. It is much easier if operators rotate between jobs and cannot rely exclusively on muscle memory.