TPS

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

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

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.

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Jun 6 2014

Next frontiers for lean | McKinsey

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing

“…Quietly, though, in Nagoya, Japan, Taiichi Ohno and his engineering colleagues at Toyota were perfecting what they came to call the Toyota production system, which we now know as lean production. Initially, lean was best known in the West by its tools: for example, kaizen workshops, where frontline workers solve knotty problems; kanban, the scheduling system for just-in-time production; and the andon cord, which, when pulled by any worker, causes a production line to stop…”

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

This article implies that the “Kaizen workshop” is a tool of the Toyota Production System, when in fact it is an American invention from the 1990s and what it does is not what is meant by Kaizen in Japan

Then the article describes Kanban as “the scheduling system for just-in-time production.” It is really only a a tool of scheduling among many, including heijunka, just-in-sequence, consignment… The last example, Andon cords, had been observed at Ford in 1931.

Even if this choice of examples is unfortunate, Toyota people invented many tools while adopting and refining existing ones, and it is true that each tool, taken out of context, is of limited value. Toyota’s merit is to have deployed them in a uniquely effective way as part of a system of production.

This is, however, not what the article says. It jumps instead to management disciplines, like “putting customers first,” an idea that bazaar merchants worldwide have had for millenia.

“Enabling workers to contribute to their fullest potential” and “constantly searching for better ways of working” is in fact something that Toyota has done better than its competitors. And these are sound management objectives, but you could pursue them and still not be competitive.

The article implies that the technical content of the Toyota production system is a detail. All that matters is focusing on customers and treating people right. Is it? I don’t think so.

This attitude is the root cause  of the failure of so many “Lean implementations.” Until the technical content of the Toyota Production System is understood and properly valued, the Lean movement cannot claim “Mission Accomplished” in manufacturing.

See on www.mckinsey.com

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Jun 4 2014

Business Intelligence and Jidoka | Toyota’s Simon Dorrat | PEX

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
Simon Dorrat is Manager of Toyota’s Business Intelligence function where he is responsible for defining and delivering all services relating to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing including BI, ETL, Data Quality, Master Data and OLAP. […] Simon shares his thoughts on how Business Intelligence fits with the Toyota Way, suggests three ways for IT to provide better value to the business and even explains why doing a kitchen renovation helped some illuminate important aspects of software development.

Michel Baudin‘s insight:

For the IT-phobic, a Data Warehouse is a database that makes historical data from multiple sources accessible for analytics. It is commonly used to provide management with Business Intelligence (BI). The process of periodically feeding a data warehouse is called Extract, Transfer and Load (ETL).

Of course, analysis is only worth doing on data that is complete and accurate, hence the need for tools to ensure Data Quality. The different sources usually have different nomenclatures for products, processes, or facilities, and you need your Master Data to integrate them in a single, consistent model. Finally, “OLAP” stands for Online Analytical Processing.

The first sentence in the article describes Toyota as “creating the precursor to Lean Manufacturing” and nearly made me stop reading further. It would have been a mistake.

See on www.processexcellencenetwork.com

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May 9 2014

Making time for improvement

“How do you make time for improvements?” asked a manager on The Lean Edge. The anonymous questioner is self-described as experienced in Lean and currently CEO of a company in the outdoor sports industry, with employees who want time to climb, backpack, canoe, etc. This question brought forth an unusually brutal answer from usually mild-mannered Art Smalley, casting doubt on the questioner’s actual experience of Lean and telling him or her to exercise leadership.

I would not be so harsh. The situation in the CEO’s company is best described by this cartoon I found on Scott Simmerman’s site:

Getting out of this dysfunctional mode of operation is not obvious, and can be a challenge even for someone who has experienced Lean in a company that has been working on it for a few years.

While I have never seen it acknowledged in the literature, my own experience is that first-line managers — whether called supervisors, group leaders, or area coordinators — are the key agents for improvement activity. As part of management, they have the clout needed to get support from Maintenance, Engineering, and other support groups; from being on the first line, they are in direct contact with production operators and communicate with them daily. This puts them in a unique position to lead improvement projects, but the way their job is set up in many companies prevents them doing it.

In the Toyota system in assembly, the first-line managers are in charge of four to six teams of four to six operators each, which translates to a minimum of 16 operators and a maximum of 36, with the actual average being near the low end. When NUMMI was running, the figure was an average of one first-line manager for 17 operators. Contrast this with a situation I encountered in many manufacturing companies, where each first-line manager had 80 to 100 operators, and had no time for anything but expediting parts, keeping records, and disciplining rogue operators. The upper managers were proud of this situation, and described it as “Lean.” They didn’t think it was a good idea to have more first-line managers because they are “non-value added.”

I don’t presume to know whether this is the case in the questioner’s sporting goods company but, if it is, reinforcing first-line management is a good place to start, particularly if it can be done by internal transfers, for example by giving engineers the opportunity to try their hand at running production. It must also be clear that these new first-line managers, with fewer operators, are expected to spend 30% of their time on improvement.

Starting continuous improvement in an organization is a bootstrapping process. Pilot projects not only demonstrate value but free resources and develop skills that allow you to ramp up the activity. For this to happen, the selection of pilot projects is critical and here are some of the conditions they must meet:

  • They must be few in number. An organization that is starting out in Lean may have the capacity to undertake two projects, but not ten.
  • They must be within the area of responsibility of a single first-line manager, to avoid the complexity associated with involving multiple departments.
  • Each one must have tangible, measurable improvements at stake, at least in quality and productivity. Otherwise, they will not be “pilots” of anything.
  • They must be feasible with current skills of the work force.
  • They must be opportunities to develop new skills.
  • The target area must have a sufficient remaining economic life. If you plan to shut it down in six months, don’t bother improving it.
  • The first-line manager must perceive the project as an exciting opportunity.
  • …

Most “Lean initiatives” do not bother with such considerations.  No wonder they fail.

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May 1 2014

13 pillars of the Toyota Production System |Toyota UK corporate blog

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
“Underpinned by thirteen core processes and philosophies, The Toyota Production System pioneered modern manufacturing as we know it. Here’s what each one is and how each one works. The Toyota Production System is the blueprint for modern manufacturing, and is employed in Britain to build the Toyota Auris and Avensis models. Here, we take a look at the thirteen philosophies that underpin it.”

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

Thanks to Mark Graban for drawing my attention to this blog from Toyota UK and this article in particular. It is always useful to know Toyota’s official line about its own system. Corporate blogs are perversions of the concept of a blog, which is intended to be a conversation between an individual human and the rest of the world. When you read a post, you know who stands behind it and who will respond to your comments. Corporate blogs lack this authorial voice, and are a public relations exercise.

The first “pillar” in this article is the Konnyaku stone. I had never heard of it The only kind of Konnyaku I am familiar with is gelatinous slabs found in Japanese dishes. I didn’t know the name was used in polishing sheet metal, and I am still not sure what kind of a pillar of a production system it may be.

The picture illustrating the Andon paragraph does not appear related to the subject. An Andon board, on the other hand, is shown as an illustration of Kanban.

The picture on Jidoka shows automatic welding by robots, but the text only describes equipment “designed to detect problems and stop automatically when required,” without saying that it happens to be automatic. The paragraph also describes operators stopping production “the moment they spy something untoward,” which, while important, is not jidoka per se.

“Kaizen” is described as “a mantra for continuous improvement.” I thought it was just continuous improvement, not a mantra for it. The paragraph also states that it achieves “efficiency optimization.” If it did, however, you would be at an optimum, and continuous improvement would no longer be possible.

See on blog.toyota.co.uk

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Apr 22 2014

When “Lean” is Watered Down to “The Customer is King”

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing

Making your business lean might be a surefire way to lose customers | Quartz.com |Stephen MacIntyre

“Recently, I lost my wallet and had to replace a couple of bank cards (a situation millions of people face yearly). The first bank I called required me to slowly navigate through an automated system with an endless succession of prompts, while I grew increasingly frustrated and weary. Finally—after almost an hour!—a robotic voice told me that I would receive a new card in about a week.”

http://qz.com/190968/making-your-business-lean-might-be-a-surefire-way-to-lose-customers/

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

The Toyota Production System (TPS) is the best performing way we know to build cars, and it has a rich technical and managerial content. From the 1970s on, Toyota promoted among its suppliers. They were joined in the 1980s by Toyota’s competitors and a few non-automotive pioneers, who didn’t fully understand it.

Rebranded “Lean” in the 1990s, it was sold first in many manufacturing sectors and then outside of manufacturing. As a consequence, however, the “Lean Body of Knowledge” offered by most consultants and training organizations became more and more generic, and gradually drained of substance.

In this article, Lean boils down to “maximizing customer value using fewer resources.” If that is what Lean is,  then I don’t know any businessperson — from my local dry-cleaner to the CEO of a major manufacturing company — who would not claim to doing it. They might express it in simpler words, like “taking care of customers without wasting money,” but the meaning is the same.

“The customer is king” is Business 101, not the defining characteristic of TPS or Lean as I see it, which addresses the needs of all stakeholders, not just customers. A “relentless customer focus” may be what you want to tell customers about, but it is not the basis for providing supplier support or career planning for production operators.

See on qz.com

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