For most participants, Day 2 of the Global Lean Summit was a visit to the Toyota Material Handling (TMH) plant in Columbus, IN, organized by Sam McPherson and hosted by Tom Lego.  There were two busloads of us.

The Tour

TMH gave us an introduction to the company, took us through their shop floor, their “adrenaline room,” the obeya where management huddles twice a day, surrounded with walls of status information, and their training facility, which they call “dojo.” They explained their Weak Point Management and Change Point Management as part of their Dantotsu Quality system, patiently answered all our questions, and treated us to breakfast and lunch. All of this deserves elaboration but, in this post, I would like to focus on their parting gift.

The Parting Gift

Each of us received a Toyota forklift building blocks set from First Gear, Just don’t look for it on the First Gear website, as it’s not there:

Assembling the Forklift

My empty-nester home is short a 10-year-old to take on the assembly, so I did it myself. It’s 175 parts, about twice as many as the Lego tractors we have been using for simulation games and as an example in the BOM Rap. Out of the box, the parts come in three bags, with a sheet of stickers and a booklet of instructions.

The Parts

The bags of parts reminded me of Ikea’s pouches of screws and dowels, which are a nightmare to search for parts.

My first step is to separate the items into a divider box and then check that I have the right count of each. I tried to do the same for my Toyota forklift, but I didn’t have a divider box handy with enough slots for all items, and I settled for separating them by color:</span>

The Instructions

The instructions come in a booklet of 1o pages,  8.25 x 5.5 in.

Parts List

The booklet opens with a complete parts list, with a picture and the number used but no ID.

Assembly Instructions

The instructions are graphic, wordless, and self-explanatory. For each step, you see the kit of needed parts in the upper left corner. The joining of parts is shown by dotted lines.

Purely pictographic instructions are inspiring, particularly because they do not require assemblers to speak the same language. In a real manufacturing situation, you usually cannot eliminate all text. The best instructions are infographic, integrating the pictures with callouts to key points of the operation, and specs to respect for characteristics like torque.</p>

The Forklift, Assembled

The First Gear blocks are similar to Lego’s, but I found them harder to work with. In the latter stages of assembly, I had a hard time snapping on new pieces.  Sometimes, other pieces popped off. To keep it together, I resorted to glue, but it made it impossible to correct errors. Eventually, I kind of finished the job.  My forklift is missing a few parts I couldn’t find after dropping them on the floor, and I have a few left over. I won’t apply for a job at TMH.

Conclusion

Thanks to TMH for this gift. It now stands guard on my bookshelf next to a Lego tractor and a daruma from Katie Anderson. As for what we learned during the visit, I still need to write it up.

#globalleansummit #tmh #toyotamaterialnandling#toyota