Following the workshop, the sustaining team will continue to drive the future state. This is the check-act part of the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle. The team meets on a weekly basis to do the following: Review the status of the open action items from the project plan. Review process metrics to ensure improvements are being achieved. [...]

The session begins with a review of the scope of the process to be improved and a review of the objectives with the team. Some training is provided on basic lean concepts, particularly the concept of value added and non-value added. The flow of a typical service kaizen workshop. Step 1. Who is the customer? [...]

There are five essential pre-workshop things to do to facilitate the flow of the workshop and effectively use participants’ time. Clearly define the scope. Determine the start point or trigger that begins the process and what the final deliverable product(s) to the customer is. Set objectives. The process owner must set measurable objectives for the [...]

Obviously, CPC is not a pure technical or service organization and has some similarities to a manufacturing process. So where can you find an example of TPS being successfully applied to less repetitive technical or service organizations? The answer is that examples will be hard to find. You could spend your time looking for such [...]

Canada Post Corporation (CPC) is the equivalent of the U.S. Postal Service. It has a commercial mandate and leaders at this government-owned corporation operate with the same corporate governance as a private company. The profits are reinvested in the company to secure its ability to grow or are turned over to the Canadian government in [...]

In technical and service organizations, people are sitting at desks, working at computers, walking about, sitting around conference rooms, and generally busy moving from task to task. It is very difficult to understand the workflow in the same way you can map a physical product as it is being transformed. In service organizations, the work [...]

Applying the Toyota Production System outside the shop floor can be done, but this takes some creativity. Certainly, the basic principles can be applied to administrative processes. We sent some associates from our kaizen promotion office to dealers to help them. They have been able to reduce the time it takes to inspect the vehicle [...]

Anyone who has participated in creating a learning organization knows that it is a major undertaking. It has taken Toyota well over a decade to build an organization in North America that bears even a resemblance to the learning enterprise it built over several decades in Japan. Moving people from firefighting and short-term fixes to [...]

The adage that “you get what you measure” is in a sense true at Toyota as well. Toyota long ago realized that the key to organizational learning is to align objectives of all of its employees toward common goals. The underlying value system of Toyota’s culture does that to a great degree. But to get [...]

Believing they can get any behavior they can measure, companies wishing to emulate Toyota’s system often ask me about its metrics. To their inevitable disappointment, they learn that Toyota is not particularly strong at developing sophisticated and common metrics across the company. Toyota measures processes everywhere on the factory floor, but prefers simple metrics and [...]

Teamwork never overshadows individual accountability at Toyota. Individual accountability is not about blame and punishment, but about learning and growing. A key to learning and growing, not only within Toyota but in Japanese culture, is hansei, which roughly means “reflection.” Hansei is a bit of Japanese culture that Toyota recently has been working to teach [...]

At Toyota, a five-why analysis is often used as part of a seven-step process they call “practical problem solving.”  Before the five-why analysis can begin, “practical problem solving” requires you to clarify the problem or, in Toyota terminology, “grasp the situation.” Trainers who teach this methodology within Toyota have found the most difficult part to [...]

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 [...]