The Toyota Way - book by Jeffrey Liker - blog by Karl Janowski
The Toyota Way - “To achieve the right results, you need the right process”
Not too many companies believe their competitive advantage is their process. But the title of the first chapter says it all, “Using Operational Excellence as a Strategic Weapon”. Many people think the Toyota Way is lean process development, but after reading The Toyota Way I understand that lean is just a part of their “operational excellence”. Their real excellence can be summed up as “culture and discipline”.The Toyota Way isn’t a process, it’s the name for Toyota’s culture involving: problem solving (see for yourself, consensus decision making, and ask why? five times), people and partners (grow leaders and your business partners), process (eliminate waste, lean flow to view the problems, level the workload, stop as soon as there is a quality problem, pull systems, visibility, and standardized tasks), and philosophy (long term thinking). This culture influences every level of Toyota.
How many companies have a name for their culture?Many people confuse the Toyota Production System (TPS) with the Toyota Way. TPS is the manufacturing process; the Toyota Way is the culture. Most companies try to implement lean (just in time) production systems and fail because they don’t have the culture and discipline to do it. Simple example: western plants try to minimize downtime; at Toyota downtime is considered good because problems are getting fixed. Without the discipline to run so lean that problems pop up, western plants have a hard time finding and fixing the problems.
"Minimize costs by maximizing quality at every level of the organization"Toyota’s methods are surprisingly low-tech. Every employee is a problem solver and taught the Toyota Way. Culture is ingrained. Reports are given on one sheet of paper. There is no Six Sigma, only simple statistics. Processes are standardized and visible systems (andons) are created to show deviation from the process. Pretend for a minute that every employee at your company had a traffic light on their head and every day you could see if they were behind schedule, on time, or running ahead. Again this isn’t just for manufacturing but for all parts of Toyota.
“The Toyota Way” is only 310 pages, but it took me forever to read, mostly because the material was new to me. I feel the same way about this book as I do “The Fifth Discipline” by Peter Senge. I’ve been exposed to a new subject and there’s no possible way I could absorb all of the material. I have to review it a few times before it starts to sinks in. I recommend this to anyone interested in process or corporate culture.
DefinitionsAndon – visible error system
Genchi Genbutsu – go see for yourself
Hansei – reflection
Kaizen –continuous improvement
Heijunka – level the workload