The Toyota Production System (TPS) -- What Are the Misconceptions?

Earlier this month, Sarah K. Womack published a very interesting new book entitled Toyota's Improvement Thinking from the Inside: From Personal Transformation to Organizational Transformation, which describes how Toyota, through its coaches and leaders, develops its members’ capabilities through a series of continuous improvement (kaizen and problem-solving) activities. For many members of Toyota, this process results in a personal transformation that ultimately leads to organizational transformation.

When I spoke with Sarah this past week, I asked her: "What are the biggest misconceptions about Toyota’s continuous improvement methods and management system?” Here is her complete response:

The biggest misconception I personally had about Toyota’s continuous improvement methods and management system was a degree of personal development and deliberate challenge required to learn how to improve.  It was a journey of mastery of improvement tools, business needs, and how to work with members of your team to accomplish daily objectives.  For most members, that mastery was deeply personal and demanded humility and continuous reflection to transform our mindsets.  And, while there was some talk about Toyota’s philosophy of respect for people, respect is a social construct and difficult to understand from outside of the group.  Once I was inside, I saw how much emphasis there was on reducing team member burden towards the end of reducing waste and creating value for customers. 

More generally speaking of the field, I find many misconceptions about how the entire system works together.  Organizations tend to over-emphasize or de-emphasize the Toyota Production System (TPS) tools for improvement when a successful approach lands at a healthy balance.  The TPS tools are good entry points for people development and continuous improvement.  Value stream mapping, for example, is a tool to chart how material and information flows within a system, show waste, and tell a kaizen story (of waste reduction).  Even if a system is not very complex, learning it through deep study then articulating that learning visually is a special skill set developed over time.  You can feel confident in your skill set when you are able to use such a tool to tell the story of your improvement work.

Finally, I would highlight the misconception around standardization.  Many organizations, within and outside of manufacturing, think it is too rigid to work successfully.  However, Toyota and others have shown that by deeply studying processes and standardizing them, continuous improvements in safety, quality, and other performance outcomes are achievable.

What do you think about Sarah's experience? Has your company implemented a Lean initiative based on the Toyota Production System? Was is transformative?

The Evolution of Product Development -- Has Lean Adjusted?

In October, Cécile Roche and Luc Delamotte published a book entitled The Lean Engineering Travel Guide: The Best Itineraries for Developing New Products and Satisfying Customers. This book explains many Lean Engineering practices in some detail and the best itineraries to develop better products, discussing the underlying intentions and offering advice for implementation. It includes numerous concrete cases that illustrate this part with case material drawn from the authors’ own experiences. In addition, there is a brief guide to where and how to get started.  

When I spoke with Cécile this month, I asked her: "How has Lean adjusted as product development evolves?" Here is her complete answer:

The power of the Lean approach is that it is based on two strong convictions. 

The first is that a company will succeed if it really takes care of the customers, and therefore offers products that will solve their real problems - Do the right thing!

The second is that the company will make money thanks to the ingenuity of its employees, which must be encouraged by the existence of organized thinking spaces. 

By doing this, you avoid the biggest wastes imaginable: products that don't sell, products that you don't know how to produce, maintain, or recycle at the right cost, and all the rework caused by poor choices - Do the right thing, then do it right!

The practices and tools of Lean are all geared towards answering this question: what are we doing to give our staff the means to understand customers properly, and the means to identify the waste caused by our misconceptions? This constant questioning, which always begins with "Do we know what we don't know?” is the best way of ensuring that we are constantly adapting to change.

To encourage this questioning, we must set up a system that can very quickly identify the gaps, knowledge gaps, and trade-offs that need to give rise to creative discussions and train people to solve problems using appropriate methods. It is the Lean system.

Lean is a dynamic approach. It's not about freezing practices in procedures that are excellent one day but already unsuitable the next, but about regularly questioning all changes (in the context, of technology, resources, skills, etc.) to assess their impact. This is what we call the Kaizen spirit. As Allen Ward said, "Instead of learning to surf, conventional organizations try to control the waves! This almost never works."

What do you think of Cécile Roche's thoughts on Lean methodology? Do you feel that Lean continues to benefit the changing face of product development? 

Those Who Facilitate Improvement Workshops... and the Mistakes They Make.

During this past May, Sheilah O'Brien published a very useful and practical book entitled Facilitating Rapid Process Improvement Workshops: The Self-Study Guide for Lean Leaders. The intent of the book is to help professionals who feel they are not truly gaining the full results of improvement initiatives and kaizen events. In the book, Sheilah speaks to the facilitator through coaching notes and actual workshop documents and techniques so the reader can fully understand how greater results are achieved. 

When I spoke with Sheilah last week about her book, I asked her: "What are the common mistakes facilitators make when overseeing rapid process improvement (RPI) workshops?" Here is her complete answer:

The common mistakes of facilitators of RPI workshops are:

1. Not understanding the facilitator role before you start. The RPI team is made up of workers who know about the problem to be analyzed.  They are dedicated. Facilitate with respect and inclusion. By passing on lessons and what you know to the team, you are working your way out of a job. 

• “Team, please look at this flipchart. Do any of you want to change or add to them? Does everyone agree?” 

• The facilitator's role should be to get the exercise started. Once it gets going, the volunteer facilitator (from the team) can carry it to its fruition. 

• The facilitator lets the RPI team have their lead. The team knew what to do next.  

2. Not assuring that there is a monitoring system in place after the RPI ends: 

• The end of the RPI means a shift in roles.  You, as the facilitator, no longer facilitate the workshop. Now you take on an advisory role to the process sponsor and responsible managers on how to track the implementation of improvements.

3. Not knowing that you need to keep two steps ahead of the team:

• The facilitator, proud of the development of an improved process with all its steps, forgets about all the process supports (to those steps) that need to be improved too, such as forms, materials for the job, etc. 

• The facilitator gets midway into the workshop and realizes he/she does not have a mechanism “to pull it all together”-- the risk is the team’s good work can go missing.

4. The facilitator hasn’t considered the “what if’s?”:

• What if the organization doesn’t have data available? 

• What if no one is available to take the team through the workplace (i.e., GEMBA)? 

• What if you discover there is a backlog?  

• What if there are many "products" that come out of the process?  There isn’t time to flowchart them all. 

What do you think about Sheilah's perspective on common mistakes facilitators make? Do you see these same mistakes in your organization? Are there others that are not listed here that you feel are common?

Can Lean Be Effective in the Education Sector?

This month, I spoke with Vincent Wiegel about his recently published book, Lean in the Classroom: The Powerful Strategy for Improving Student Performance and Developing Efficient Processes. This book is the first to define Lean Education in all its aspects: course design, actual teaching and learning processes, school management, and the organization of supporting processes. It is firmly based on the Lean management philosophy in conjunction with pedagogy. The book draws on both scientific research in the field of Lean management in general and Lean education in particular. In addition, it is predicated on many years of hands-on experience applying Lean both inside and outside the education sector.

During my conversation with Vincent, I asked him:  "Can Lean Be Effective in the Education Sector?" Here is his complete response:

Lean and Education are two different worlds at first glance. Education focuses on preparing our young ones for lives as responsible citizens and professionals while keeping adults up to date on burgeoning knowledge, technology, and methodologies. It is a strongly cultural and idealistic sector. Lean has a strong rationalist and business focus aiming to improve the performance of organizations. They seem worlds apart but in fact share the same outlook and basic philosophy. They need each other --Let me explain. 

The main aim of education is to determine where our students want to go, what they want to learn. Based on where they currently are, we provide them with the means to develop and grow. Teachers strive to understand their students’ thinking, what they do, and do not yet understand. This is the same as Lean Kaizen way of thinking.

The other way around, a Lean expert best not tell employees what to do but to make them see and think in a different way. They are both teachers (sensei) and students. They don’t tell but ask questions and strive to understand how the employees think and what they need to grow.

Education stands to gain from the action-oriented Lean tradition with its tools and methods. These are complementary to pedagogy. Moreover, Lean will support schools to eliminate waste from all processes, teaching, and support. It provides schools the help to strengthen strategic thinking. Schools need this to reduce teacher workloads and increase the pace to keep up with ever faster changes in knowledge. Keeping curricula up-to-date is one of main challenges that Lean will help Education to answer.

Essentially, the current way of organizing education is not tenable in the coming decade. We need to address how we teach, how we organize schools, how we increase the effectiveness of learning, how we construct classrooms, and how we deploy new technologies.

Lean management philosophy has been successfully applied across many industries – from manufacturing to healthcare, financial services, and construction. Recently, interest in Lean has steadily increased in the education sector, as it was originally introduced in that area’s administrative and support processes. Currently, the introduction of Lean and its potential in education is gaining wider exposure because of massive looming changes – for example, the introduction of technology in education (as EdTech within the traditional system and as MOOCs), demographic changes, budget pressure, new pedagogies, the entrance of more and more private providers, and changing demands of society and industry on the curriculum. 

What is missing is a joint framework that will allow schools, teachers, directors, and boards to harness the potential of these developments and then execute a strategy. Lean Education offers the potential to streamline the execution of strategy and teaching. It accelerates the development of new courses and studies that are closely aligned to the needs of students. It supports the integration of new technologies without overburdening teachers and staff.

My book Lean in the Classroom brings all these elements together into a coherent framework so schools can make necessary changes in one concerted effort. Teaching, professional support, managing the daily work, and changing the way schools function are brought together as a school-wide strategy to organize learning in a way that serves our students by making the most of their talents. 

What do you think of Vincent's ideas?  Do you believe the power of Lean methodology can be effectively applied to the education sector?

Lean in the Public Sector -- What are the Distinct Challenges?

This past November, Kate McGovern published a new book entitled A Public-Sector Journey to Lean: Fighting Muda in Times of Muri, which documents the author's Lean journey based on her experiences at the New Hampshire Bureau of Education and Training. 

During a recent conversation with Kate, I asked her, “What are the different challenges public/government institutions face when beginning a Lean initiative compared to organizations in the private sector?” Here is her complete response:

Lean initiatives in the public sector face greater obstacles than their private sector counterparts in three areas: erratic and unreliable commitment of resources, risk-averse leadership, and the responsibility to serve dual customers. 

Let’s consider each component:

Resources: Elected officials who set public budgets must be persuaded to prioritize efficiency initiatives. Funding is often erratic and inadequate, lacking the staff resources necessary to train, facilitate, and coordinate improvement efforts.   

Risk-averse leadership: Aligning authority and responsibility at the gemba (like Toyota’s Andon cord) is counter-intuitive and frightening for traditional administrators. The multiple layers of checking give them a sense of security, making them reluctant to Lean processes. What if something goes wrong? What if it gets in the press?

Dual customers: The end-user customer is an individual applying for a building permit or a driver’s license, borrowing a library book, or reporting an emergency. The public is also customer, relying on the regulatory system for health and safety. For example, the public values the enforcement of building codes. Permit applicants value a fair, efficient process with courteous, professional staff to assist them. Consider a Lean event to design a process so that every qualified applicant receives a permit within two weeks. The team would identify why customers fail to meet the meet the qualifications, and develop countermeasures such as fact sheets, checklists and staff assistance. To ensure a quality outcome, the team would consider the purpose of each requirement and recommend modifications, if appropriate. Then, they would design the most efficient way to confirm compliance and validate eligibility. 

Are any readers currently part of a Lean initiative within a public-sector organization? Do you agree with Kate's overview of the specific obstacles faced when undertaking the improvement journey?

What are the Key Ingredients for a Lean Culture?

Paul McCartney, while in the Beatles, famously claimed that “money can’t buy me love" --  According to author Richard D. Brimeyer, money also can’t buy Lean. Rick’s book Working Great! Lean Leadership Lessons for Guiding Your Organization to Excellence contains 52 lessons for leader-managers, each with challenges for applying the lesson. The format is particularly conducive to a leader’s book club.

I chatted with Rick recently to discuss his assertion that sustained Lean success is driven by a handful of critical behaviors by managers at every level of the organization. Here are some of his comments:

Unlike so many management fads (reengineering, quality circles, etc.) that have come and gone over the decades, Lean owes its endurance to the fact that it benefits all stakeholders -- customers, owners/funders, and employees. Waste doesn’t help anyone. Unfortunately, I believe a lot of organizations embark on a Lean expedition underestimating the behavior changes required of managers at every level.

Although important, the ultimate measure of success for any Lean expedition is not how many kaizen events are completed, but rather how many improvements occur outside of formal events. The latter ultimately comes down to creating a place where employees care, where they are willing to expend discretionary effort, and feel competent solving problems and removing waste. Creating that place is almost totally reliant on the behaviors they observe from their leaders day in, day out to ensure:

• Everyone understands the relevance of their work. 
• Employees feel appreciated for who they are as well as what they do. 
• Pathways for growth are evident. 
• Successes (and efforts) are regularly recognized. 
• A fair and responsive system exists for dealing with performance issues when they occur. 

Regardless of what we say, employees believe what we do. So being clear on key behaviors for leader-managers is very important. Ironically, these behaviors are consistent with any excellent supervisor, regardless of whether they are working in a Lean environment where flow and pull are practiced or not. Thus, the word “Lean” in my subtitle is practically superfluous, but these key behaviors are absolutely essential for establishing a Lean culture.

My goal for the book Working Great! is to provide a simple and useful resource for leader-managers, regardless of their level or experience. I hope to take the mystery out of culture by tying it to the behaviors to which they can hold themselves, and each other, accountable.

What do you think of Richard's points? Does the behavior of leadership at your organization reflect the true goal of the Lean initiative?

What Is the "Toyota Template"?

Lean implementations, operational excellence initiatives, and even specifically, the Toyota Production System (TPS) are often misconstrued as simply a methodology focused on the formulaic implementation of tools. In a recent book entitled The Toyota Template: The Plan for Just-In-Time and Culture Change Beyond Lean Tools, the author -- Phil Ledbetter -- posits that the building of TPS, with the goal to eliminate waste, evolved as problems were encountered and solutions put in place and a wonderful byproduct of it was the growth of a problem-solving culture throughout Toyota that is unique in the business world. I spoke with Phil this month and asked him: “What is the Toyota template and how does it help sustain a Lean implementation?” Here is his response:

The Toyota template is about the relevance of the Toyota Production System to any type of business today. It succinctly identifies the key elements, places them in a logical, sequential or of implementation, and explains how each contributed to the formation of the Toyota culture. It's a blueprint for any business interested in a true lean transformation. The gold standard is Toyota and my book, The Toyota Template, demonstrates how businesses can use the "template" to arrive at a truly Lean, just-in-time production system.

Specifically, The Toyota Template explains the critically important elements of the Toyota Production System, analyzes the sequence of implementation as the system developed, and places these elements in a logical order of implementation based on the history and current knowledge. In addition, it addresses the effect of each element on the culture and some of the reasons for Lean implementation failures, including the problem with the value stream mapping.

Fujio Cho, Ohno protege' and former Chairman of Toyota Motor Corporation, has said, "Many good companies have respect for individuals, and practice kaizen and other TPS tools.... But what is important is having all the elements together as a system. It must be practiced every day in a very consistent manner, not in spurts." The Toyota Template shows exactly how to develop this system. 

What do you feel are the major hindrances to a successful and long-term Lean implementation? 

Toyota Takes Lean to the Bank... the Food Bank

I just read this great article by Mona El-Naggar in The New York Times yesterday. Many large corporations donate money to important charities, such as food banks, all around the world, but Toyota donated something to the Food Bank for New York City that might prove more valuable than a cash outlay -- expertise on how to reduce money-draining waste and improve inefficient processes.

Look at the statistics reported in the article:

• At a soup kitchen in Harlem, Toyota’s engineers cut down the wait time for dinner to 18 minutes from as long as 90. 
• At a food pantry on Staten Island, they reduced the time people spent filling their bags to 6 minutes from 11. 
• And at a warehouse in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where volunteers were packing boxes of supplies for victims of Hurricane Sandy, a dose of kaizen cut the time it took to pack one box to 11 seconds from 3 minutes. 

There have been many books published on the adoption of Lean tools and techniques to the service industry, but this article presents direct and measurable benefits by the immediate application of  tools such as kaizen.

Here's a link to some photographs that illustrate the improvements accomplished.

Please share your thoughts on this article. Many readers of this blog have directed or participated in the application of Lean concepts to service industries -- Do you think the Food Bank for New York City could become a benchmark for other nonprofit anti-hunger organizations?

The Seattle Children's Hospital Improves Its Own Health

On Friday, July 9, The New York Times published a revealing article about the continuous performance improvement initiative (C.P.I.) at the Seattle Children's Hospital. Not only has this initiative dramatically improved patient care, but it helped cut costs per patient by 3.7 percent, which resulted in a saving of $23 million.

The article interviews Patrick Hagan, the hospital's president (as well as co-author of the forthcoming book Leading the Lean Healthcare Journey: Driving Culture Change to Increase Value), about the use of tools used most notably at Toyota such as kaizen. Hagan believes that "the highest-quality care also is the most cost-effective because we make fewer mistakes and create better outcomes."

An interesting part of the article deals with initial resistance to C.P.I. from doctors because many thought some patient-care decisions would be removed from the physicians. Dr. John Waldhausen, the division chief of pediatric general and thoracic surgery at the Seattle Children's Hospital, changed his mind as the initiative developed. He states that "C.P.I. is the same scientific method we learned in medical school, including hypotheses, data collection and analysis. It is not opinion and conjecture — it is data-driven."

Alaskan Lean

I had the pleasure of meeting Patrick Anderson -- the director of Chugachmiut (a Tribal consortium created to promote self-determination to the seven Native communities of the Chugach Region of Alaska) -- at the recent TWI Summit in Las Vegas. He told me about his organization and its Lean initiatives -- in fact, they are detailed right on the Chugachmiut site.

While perusing the site, I noticed a link to Patrick's engaging blog and perused some of the entries including this recent post about a kaizen event in the human resources department. In addition, Patrick participated in a podcast on the Lean Blog site hosted by Mark Graban in which he discusses applying Lean principles to healthcare delivery in Alaska.

Making the Invisible Visible

In a recent blog post titled Green Money, I requested that readers provide their "thoughts on the tactics used and difficulties faced when mapping electronic value streams." I received an insightful response from Carlos Venegas (author of the book Flow in the Office) explaining how he approaches that subject, so I am presenting it here:

“The key task in improving any electronic or office process is making the invisible visible. In factory environments, you can see what’s happening. We don’t always have that luxury in the office. Too much happens inside computers, inside people’s heads, and between people in conversations and meetings. Luckily, there are ways to make the invisible visible.

Let’s start with value stream mapping (VSM). This tool is excellent for making the invisible visible. Because you are capturing blocks of activity on the value stream map, you are making the invisible visible. It’s really a no-brainer. You must not do anything different if you think of automated processes as blocks of work, just like in a factory process. From the VSM, you can determine which systems are parts of kaizen opportunities.

It’s in these kaizen opportunities that people tend to run into problems. How do you address an office process or computerized process using lean tools and principles? Again, the key challenge is making the invisible visible.

Here’s one way to do it: build a workflow chart. Within the scope/boundaries of the targeted process, print out screen captures of every single screen used in a process. Then put the screen captures up sequentially. Now, draw lines from data element to data element. (Sometimes there are paper forms used in the process; include those, too.) The workflow chart helps the team see the four wastes of the office: information waste, process waste, physical waste, and people inefficiencies.

In factory workshops, teams will often do a process walk to level-set the team concerning the process and the wastes held within. The workflow chart gives the office team the opportunity to have a ‘virtual’ process walk. They can use the workflow chart to understand the process, identify the specific wastes, and design experiments, and then document the solutions.”

A Safe Path to Lean

As most lean advocates know, successful improvement initiatives cannot be driven by legislation or regulatory requirements. Any “program” that is based on mandates from a federal administration is severely limited because compliance merely drives reactive behavior -- “doing” not “thinking.” If lean tools expose and solve process problems, why can’t these same tools improve safety? Robert Hafey, author of the book Lean Safety: Transforming your Safety Culture with Lean Management, offers these insights:

“While attending the AME international conference, held in Cincinnati last October, I introduced myself to a lean thought leader and briefly described a book I had written that suggests to get lean you should start with safety. His comment back was that for most companies that is exactly where they should begin. I failed to ask a follow up question to fully understand his reasoning for supporting my contention but I know why I recommended it in book form -- because it works.

All lean leaders understand the path to real lean, lean that is lasting, is dependent on employee engagement. Resistance to lean that is predicated on cost savings has killed off many a lean effort. Because we work in adult workplaces the simple equation that cost savings = fewer employees is understood by everyone. To discourage this thinking a senior leader may state that no lay-offs will occur as a result of lean but this is not the norm. He could instead take the safe path to lean by asking his employees to focus on safety improvement and thus bypass the initial resistance to lean caused by mistrust and a lack of understanding.

Simply by facilitating safety improvement activities while using a lean tool like the kaizen blitz you can begin to train your employee base in the lean language and many of the lean tools. A team of employees given the gift of time to focus on safety will not only reduce injury risks but they will most certainly reduce the cycle time of the process they have observed. This safe path to lean can initiate a journey toward real lean for any business for it is build upon respect for people first and then cycle time reduction.”