Monthly Archive for April, 2009

An integral part of kaizen is Toyota’s famous five-why analysis. I recall interviewing Yuichi Okamoto, a former Toyota Technical Center vice president, about the secret to the success of Toyota’s product development system. I was expecting a description of a sophisticated process similar to the TPS. Instead, he answered with an underlying tone of sarcasm, [...]

Unlike most companies, Toyota does not adopt “programs of the month” nor does it focus on programs that can deliver only short-term financial results. Toyota is process oriented and consciously and deliberately invests long term in systems of people, technology, and processes that work together to achieve high customer value. “Systems” are not information systems [...]

Andy Lund, program manager for the 2004 Toyota Sienna, explained to me why he always uses nemawashi when he is making decisions and preparing to present his recommendations: For some decisions I may think I already know the answer and do not need input from others. There may be a department that is not directly [...]

With all this communication going back and forth to build consensus, one might think that Toyota takes forever to get anything done. Yet we know how efficient and speedy Toyota is, so it should not be surprising that they have communication down to a science. The most time-consuming and difficult way to understand complex ideas [...]

Toyota Way Principle 13 includes the important process of nemawashi: Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options; implement rapidly. The process of nemawashi is often used to describe how junior people build consensus by developing a proposal and circulating it broadly for management approval. In the nemawashi process, many people are giving their [...]

As a young Toyota engineer, you attack a problem with relish. You carefully identify the cause of the problem, taking care to do a thorough five-why analysis. You then think and think and come up with a brilliant solution. You detail the solution and run in to share it with your mentor. Instead of evaluating [...]

Many employees outside Japan who have joined Toyota after working for another company have had to face the challenge of learning the Toyota approach to problem solving and decision making. Because Toyota’s process of consensus decision making deviates so dramatically from the way most other firms operate, it is a major reeducation process. New employees [...]

It is easy to point to dramatic examples of genchi genbutsu, like driving all over North America to develop the Sienna minivan or standing in a circle all day in the factory, but what is most important is how it becomes incorporated into the collective psyche of all employees. It is really part of the [...]

As president of Toyota, Cho had to learn to rely more on trust than he did in the days of running a few manufacturing plants. He doesn’t have the time to go and see everything for himself. Instead, he surrounds himself with people he trusts and, by default, goes and sees secondhand through them. But [...]

Kiichiro Toyoda learned from his father the importance of getting your hands dirty and learning by doing. He insisted on this from all of his engineers. A famous story about Toyoda has become part of Toyota’s cultural heritage : One day Kiichiro Toyoda was walking through the vast plant when he came upon a worker [...]

The 2004 Sienna is what Toyota considers a major redesign—a new and improved version of its highly ranked minivan. Toyota engineered it to be bigger, faster, smoother, quieter, and about $1,000 cheaper. Toyota also designed in many small but important enhancements that make life easier for the North American driver. Many of these enhancements were [...]

David Baxter is a vice president at the Toyota Technical Center. At one point he was responsible for evaluating supplier parts. When Toyota launched a version of the Camry in 1997, they had a wire harness problem. Yazaki Corporation, a parts supplier to Toyota in Japan, supplied the problem wire harness. What happened next is [...]

There are many stories about the famous Ohno circle. I was fortunate to speak in person with Teruyuki Minoura, who at the time was president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing, North America. He had learned TPS directly from the master and part of his early education at Toyota was standing in a circle: Minoura: Mr. Ohno [...]

Literally translated, Genchi means the actual location and genbutsu means the actual materials or products. But genchi genbutsu is interpreted within Toyota to mean going to the place to see the actual situation for understanding. Gemba is a term that has become more popular. It refers to “the actual place” and means about the same [...]

While musing over American Auto’s debacle with suppliers and wondering why it wanted to take an elevator to the top without stopping at any of the floors in between, I began to conceptualize the problem as a pyramid or hierarchy. Thinking back to college social psychology, I thought of Maslow’s needs hierarchy, discussed briefly in [...]

The TSSC by design is not part of the business relationship with suppliers. It is there to educate through projects. Toyota purchasing has its own quality and TPS experts to work with suppliers when there are problems, the most severe of which is when a supplier shuts down the Toyota assembly plant because of a [...]

One way that Toyota has honed its skills in applying TPS is by working on projects with suppliers. Toyota needs its suppliers to be as capable as its own plants at building and delivering high-quality components just in time. Moreover, Toyota cannot cut costs unless suppliers cut costs, lest Toyota simply push cost reductions onto [...]

Toyota is very careful when deciding what to outsource and what to do in house. Like other Japanese automakers, Toyota outsources a lot, about 70% of the components of the vehicle. But it still wants to maintain internal competency even in components it outsources. These days a management buzzword is “core competency.” Toyota has a [...]

An excellent example of the contrast in approaches between Toyota and its competitors is in how Toyota approached the logistic challenges in building manufacturing and supply chain capabilities in North America. How can Toyota assembly plants get just-in-time delivery of parts multiple times per day to U.S.-based plants when they are spread across the U.S. [...]

Go to a conference on supply chain management and what are you likely to hear? You will learn a lot about “streamlining” the supply chain through advanced information technology. If you can get the information in nanoseconds, you should be able to speed the supply chain to nanosecond deliveries, right? What you are not likely [...]