Oct 4 2017
Toyota Helps a Young Inventor; Look at His Dad’s Toyota Desk | Mark Graban | LeanBlog
“Toyota USA shared a nice video featuring an 11-year old inventor, Bishop Curry. His dad, Bishop Curry Sr. works for Toyota Financial Services and he’s also in the video.[…] In the video, some small details beyond his invention jumped out at me. I was looking at his dad’s Toyota workplace.For one, the elder Bishop is shown at his stand-up desk.
I noticed Toyota is setting a good example when it comes to desk practices (beyond the standing desk and the multiple monitors, which are proven to improve productivity).When looking at what some other companies do, I’ve complained for a long time about what I think are misguided “Office 5S” or “Lean Office” initiatives that will insist it’s “Lean” to do things like telling employees they must:
- Put tape around your keyboard and desk items
- Remove family photos as “non-productive items”
Sourced through LeanBlog
Michel Baudin‘s comments: Over the years, Mark has posted several times about misguided efforts at “Office 5S” that don’t improve performance and are resented by office workers. Generally, I agree with him. Tidying up desks doesn’t have much of an effect because most of the work isn’t done on the desk but inside a computer network. Where organization is required is in the databases and software applications an office relies on, more than in the furniture or the copier.
Jan 3 2018
Innovation, Logistics, and Lean
Amonth ago, a reader asked Michael Ballé “If lean really is about innovation, why does so much of it seem to be about logistics, with truck preparation areas, leveling boxes, small trains, kanbans and so on?” His short answer “because logistics is the way into innovation” is a head scratcher and I fail to see any support for this assertion in the rest of his response.While TPS and, more generally, the Toyota Way are innovative in the management and technology of operations, discussions of innovation are usually about products. Even in the car industry, which companies come to mind today about product innovation? Which ones would you want to learn from? Most likely not Toyota but Tesla for its electric cars and Alphabet/Google’s subsidiary Waymo for self-driving cars, both based in Silicon Valley.
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By Michel Baudin • Blog clippings • 1 • Tags: innovation, Lean, Lean Logistics, Logistics