Jul 20 2014
The Toyota Production System (TPS), Philosophy, and DNA
According to Ranga Srinivas, “TPS is a ‘Philosophy’, not a system (System in TPS is given by Western world). That philosophy is in their DNA.”
We tend to get carried away with metaphors, and I think we need to get back to earth.
In Japanese, TPS is not only NOT a philosophy, it is not even a system, but just a method! The term is Toyota Seisan Hoshiki (トヨタ生産方式), and Hoshiki means “method,” not “system.” It reminds me of Louie de Palma, the Danny de Vito character in the series Taxi, saying about his girlfriend, “She sees something in me that no one ever saw, something that isn’t there.”
Let us study TPS for what it really is: the best known way to make cars. And, if Mark Graban can learn from it and improve hospitals, it’s wonderful. But let us not go to a car maker for philosophy. It’s the wrong shop.
Saying it’s the best known way to make cars is not talking it down; it’s what drew me to it. Philosophy is also a wonderful thing, but corporate philosophy is to philosophy as advertising is to poetry. If you parse it, it should be to understand the image management wants to project, not what the company does.
There is a Japanese word for philosophy (tetsugaku, 哲学). Googling “toyota tetsugaku” yields a single occurrence on the Toyota website, in one paragraph about “Business strategy” (hoshin), which translates as follows:
“Toyota aims to be a good corporate citizen through the provision of clean and safe products, to contribute to the prosperity of society, and earn the trust of the international community. I will introduce the vision for the future and Toyota’s philosophy, which is alive in the Toyota Production System and the corporate concept.”
For comparison purposes, this is what GM says about itself on its website:
“In order to achieve our goals, GM has remained committed to the following formula for success:
- Move faster and take risks to achieve sustained success, not just short-term results
- Lead in advanced technologies and quality in creating the world’s best vehicles
- Give employees more responsibility and authority and then hold them accountable
- Create positive, lasting relationships with customers, dealers, communities, union partners and suppliers, to drive our operating success.”
I have the greatest respect for TPS, and have experienced its adaptability to industries ranging from making frozen foods to computers and aerospace. And I understand that you can’t go to a hospital and tell administrators, doctors, and nurses that you are going to help them with a method for making cars. You not only have to adapt it, you must also present it in such a way that they will listen. For 25 years, the word “Lean” has been used for this purpose. It has also been abused, to leverage the respect inspired by TPS in order to promote unrelated ideas.
We also need to be careful about references to DNA in this context. I believe it started with Spear and Bowen Harvard Business Review Article Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System. Culture is nurture; DNA, nature. Your culture is the way your family, school, and society molded you; your DNA is the genetic program that made you.
Generally, we should treat national culture as irrelevant to manufacturing. If Japanese business leaders in the late 19th and early 20th century had considered it relevant, they would have decided that manufacturing was a product of European and American culture that could not be transplanted to Japan.
About housekeeping habits specifically, I remember being impressed, while walking the streets of Rotterdam at night, by houses with the drapes pulled and the lights on to let passers-by admire spotless living rooms. What we saw in factories in the same country, however, told us that the cultural obsession with neatness in daily life did not carry over to the production shop floor.
DNA is even less relevant. In every society, there are misguided individuals who believe that having been born into a particular group makes them better at some activities; the rest of society calls them bigots. If DNA had anything to do with manufacturing excellence, it could not be achieved by learning. You can learn a method, master a system, and even assimilate a culture, but you can’t change your DNA.
Contents
July 20, 2014 @ 9:04 am
Insightful post. I agree. Ohno referred to it as a method, though some Toyota people do talk in terms of the philosophy or philosophical tenets associated with TPS (maybe to facilitate communication to English speaking audiences?). Referring to DNA is indeed a problem. In 2002, former TMMNA president Teruyuji Minoura had this to say about DNA:
“These are some of the important philosophical tenets of Toyota and of the Toyota Production System. You might call these tenets the ‘DNA’ of Toyota. I wish they were truly like DNA. Why? Because DNA is genetically encoded and is transmitted automatically from parents to children. If Toyota’s core values were truly like DNA, our philosophy and production system would be automatically inherited by future generations of Toyota team members. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Our philosophy is not really in our genes.
The transmission of a fundamental philosophy to new people or to the next generation is normally accomplished through education and training. In Toyota, we call this process ‘ikusei.’ This concept is closer to ‘nurturing or raising,’ just as parents raise children, than to simple education or training.Parents raise children through instruction, training, and by setting examples day in and day out. That is what we must do at Toyota, to instill our core philosophies as well as the practical know-how of the Toyota Production System. This notion of ‘ikusei’ or ‘nurturing/raising’ is another important underpinning of every Toyota operation.”
July 20, 2014 @ 12:26 pm
Many thanks for this insightful article Michel!
It will be always the “DNA” of the founders of an organization that will shape the DNA of the organization itself.
Curiosity to compete on same level with the European loom industry brought the Toyoda family to start what we now now the Toyota Production System.
Interestingly they learned a lot from Europe, and especially a Scottish philosopher, Samual Smiles (who is widely unknown nowadays, in Germany nobody knows about him) – see an older post by myself on him in the context of the topic.
Even though the national culture may set a general foundation which should be taken into account when going for lean, we as change agents have to take even more into account that within organizations there are several cultures at work which have very different DNAs itself (sometimes even counter to each other). Edgar Schein, Prof. em. of MIT Sloan, has written lots on this issue, and organizational culture. The following rather short article focuses on three cultures within organizations (executives, engineers, workers)
Understanding the forces that are driven by the DNA of the cultures within organizations, and the general DNA of nations is essential to bring forward change in the intended form and direction in a last fashion. Especially engineering cultures like the automotive industry have a hard time to understand the “human side” of the change process, that cannot so easily captured by traditional measurement systems that are in place.
July 21, 2014 @ 6:18 am
Again, DNA and culture are different. DNA is genetically inherited while culture can be learned. Habits, beliefs, values, the “way we do things” add up to a culture, not to DNA. See Teruyuji Minoura’s quote in Bob Emiliani’s comment above.
Regarding Samuel Smiles, could you tell us in what way he influenced the founders of Toyota?
At 23 pages, the Schein article is not exactly short. Could you tell us the gist of it?
July 21, 2014 @ 7:46 am
DNA and culture – certainly a “hot” topic in order to understand the effectiveness of change efforts. The reason I commented immediately is that I am active in this field for quite some time.
Matthew May, author of quite some books around lean, and also a blog has written in one of his books (“The Elegant Solution”) about Samuel Smiles and how it shaped the early days of the Toyoda family business (back then in the loom business).
Concerning the cultures a more specific article is in the Sloan Management Review,
Quotes from the article:
“Three Cultures of Management
The learning problems that I have identified can be directly related to the lack of alignment among three cultures, two of which are based on occupational communities — (1) the culture of engineering, (2) the culture of CEOs, and (3) the culture of operators — and the shared assumptions that arise in the “line units” of a given organization as it attempts to operate efficiently and safely. To understand how these three cultures interact, let us examine their shared assumptions.
…
Operator Culture
… At some fundamental level, how one does things in a given industry reflects the core technologies that created that industry. And, as those core technologies themselves evolve, the nature of operations changes.
….
Engineering Culture
… In all organizations, one group represents the basic design elements of the technology underlying the work of the organization and has the knowledge of how that technology is to be utilized.
…
Executive Culture
…This executive worldview is built around the necessity to maintain an organization’s financial health and is preoccupied with boards, investors, and the capital markets. …”
Even though all three work in the same organization, should have at least the same understanding on where the organization is going, their cultures, perceived assumptions, and “DNA” (that are based underneath) are quite different.
Especially when trying to “change a system” it becomes obvious that there are even more sub-cultures in organizations at work.
A short intro about the three levels of culture (within each “culture type” as we speak about organizations) that Edgar Schein distinguishes in this Wikipedia article.
More than happy to continue the conversation, as I think the topic is well worth to decipher at a deeper level.
July 21, 2014 @ 9:12 am
Thanks for the details of the Schein article. After reading the May interview, I took the liberty of removing the link, because the interview gives no information about what the Toyodas learned from Samuel Smiles. After chitchat about the California weather, all we learn is that they had an early copy of his “Self-Help” book.
What did they read in it that influenced TPS?
July 27, 2014 @ 1:07 am
Michel – thanks for your comment. Back in the days when Sakichi Toyoda was head of the company (in the late 19th, early 20th century) it wasn’t certainly about TPS (as we now know it). Samuel Smiles intrigued his own notion on the “contributions of the individual to the company, and the contribution of the company to the larger world” (How Toyota Became #1: Leadership Lessons from the World’s Greatest Car Company, David Magee).
Best to let Toyota themselves speak about the contribution of Smiles to the company as it is today,
“Sakichi was greatly inspired by the book Saigoku risshi hen (西国立志編), published in 1870. The book was a Japanese version of Samuel Smiles’ English Self-Help, translated by Professor Masanao Nakamura (中村正直) of Shizuoka Gakumonsho, and was a bestseller in the Meiji era, selling over one million copies. The work, which described an inventor who designed textile machinery such as spinning machines and power looms, sparked Sakichi’s desire to learn. Furthermore, the Patent Monopoly Act of April 1885 encouraged and protected invention. It is said that these factors drew Sakichi’s interest and inspired him to embark on loom invention.” (from the Toyota website)
I have to clarify that I bought David Magee’s book back in early 2007 when still working at BMW at the plant in Leipzig, East Germany, in the production control and got to deal with challenges to improve process quality, and workers’ well being at the same time. That brought me in touch with lots of literature (books, and blogs) in the lean sphere and led me towards Samuel Smiles myself. I own a 1912 copy of the “Self Help” booklet.
The following is an overview about it,
“This volume is dedicated to helping people to “apply themselves diligently to right pursuits–sparing neither labour, pains, nor self-denial in prosecuting them–and to rely upon their own efforts in life.” Though the author admits that his lessons are “old-fashioned,” he nevertheless delivers still-useful lectures on such commonsense concepts as the importance of learning from failure, how work is the best teacher, and the value of thrift, gentility, and honesty, all peppered with examples of such noble industry from the lives of writers, scientists, artists, inventors, educators, philanthropists, missionaries, and martyrs. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 6-by-9-inch format by Waking Lion Press.”
July 23, 2014 @ 11:16 pm
In a way I agree with you Mr. Baudin, that TPS is a system or rather a collection of methods that Toyota employs in making cars.
But from here on I differ a little bit.
I have always believed that though the systems or methods or tools are important but they may or may not be applicable in other scenarios
What we should look for is the philosophy behind these systems, the basic principles that are consistent in the working of Toyota. The philosophy has been deeply absorbed and become part of Toyota’s Culture.
The Philosophy that we know is made up of three elements
1. Just-In-Time
2. Continuous Improvement
3. Respect for People.
DNA is what comes naturally. The article “Decoding the DNA of TPS” talks about the way people work at Toyota, the logic behind workplace design and the way they approach a problem. The article appeared in HBR and may be they got over-enthusiastic with the Title. I agree that calling all of the things mentioned in the article the DNA of Toyota Production System might not be correct.
But I believe, what does come naturally to Toyota, what is observed in whatever they do or in all of their functions and processes is the way they analyze and solve a problem or rather the way they attack a problem. They go to the root cause of the problem using the 5-Why technique and other tools as Fishbone Diagram and then try to eliminate the root cause. I think this is quite unique and other companies don’t even come close to this profound passion for problem solving.
I remember, during one of my visits to a Toyota subsidiary, we observed that their Project Management room had no desks or chairs or projector. There was a big circle drawn on the floor with names of Departments written on its circumference. It was quite clear that during a meeting people were expected to stand on their respective department label in a circular formation. But why? You can’t expect HODs and the MD to stand during a project review meeting. But surprisingly they all stood for the meeting. A little inquiry led us to know that the MD spent 3-4 hours standing and reviewing various projects going on.
The steps or improvements that led to this final formation were interesting.
They had tables and chairs and projectors in the room. They first observed that the projector was more of a hindrance as it was difficult to view the entire project plan and when you needed to make notes or highlight delays on the plan. Soft copy didn’t let you refer time and again to the original time line. So they started using Hard copies. So the projector was eliminated.
People sitting on a desk either led to them engrossed in their own laptops or cellphones. So out went the desks & Chairs.
Then when they started having standing meetings with the person giving his update facing the audience (rest of the project members), it was observed that smaller groups formed within the project review meeting and used to discuss or chat. Also, people used cell phones or simply did not pay attention as people standing in front shielded them. So the cleverest iteration where people stand in a circle facing each other so they can see what each one is doing and are naturally forced to pay attention and participate in the review.
I think such passion of looking for and eliminating the root cause is rare and is more of a natural instinct. It’s in Toyota’s DNA.
July 24, 2014 @ 6:21 am
Yes, abstracting the underlying principles of TPS is essential to porting the approach over to domains other than car making. And it’s not easy to do. I think the list of three principles you give is too generic to be actionable. I also think that Jeffrey Liker’s list of 14 principles in The Toyota Way is too specific and too long, because nobody can remember 14 principles. See my Introduction to Lean webinar for my own take on this subject.
The example of your project meeting room is excellent, although perhaps as an example of culture, not DNA. I must admit, however, that I find the perspective of a 4-hour project review meeting daunting, especially if the the format is one team member after another giving a progress update.
This kind of meeting is common in many organizations, takes forever, and is crushingly boring, except possibly for the project manager. Instead, individual progress updates should be done one-on-one between each team member and the project manager, with all-hands team meetings kept to less than 1 hour and focused on topics of interest to the whole team, including both schedule adherence issues and technical content.
July 24, 2014 @ 7:53 am
The principle are generic, but more or less all Toyota’s systems and tools have then as the foundation and the 14 Principals prescribed in The Toyota Way are the subsets of the 3 Principles.
I would like to further elaborate the example i quoted. The MD did spend 3-4 Hours reviewing multiple projects. One Project review did not last for more than 20 minutes. They did away with the One Team Member updating rest of the members and rather focussed on reviewing the activity on the project time line. Reviewing upcoming activities to address any delays or obstacles to meet the target dates.
The DNA of Toyota arms it with an instinct to look for problems, identify it’s root cause and set up countermeasures.
July 27, 2014 @ 7:06 am
Pranay: thanks for the further details.
Again, it’s culture, not DNA. It can be learned; it’s not something you are born with.
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August 1, 2014 @ 2:03 am
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