Author Archive
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Monday, August 9, 2010 |
As I mentioned I'll share a recent story about Jidoka from a client visit and discuss what we learned in the process of implementation. Usually when people talk about Jidoka the first examples that are discussed involve an operator on an assembly line pulling a chord which stops the line. Then a supervisor comes running and fixes whatever problem just occurred. I don't really consider this full blown 100% true Jidoka however by my standards...
Jidoka is when a machine (not just a human pulling a chord) is enabled with some type of device which senses an abnormality which in turn ...
Continue reading this entry »
|
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Saturday, August 7, 2010 |
I think there are some real interesting components to this topic to discuss so I will probably break my response up into several parts for simplicity. For some personal perspective on this topic after returning back to the United States from Japan in the mid 1990's I was somewhat surprised to learn of all the emerging interest in the Toyota Production System. Books were being published on the topic and Harvard Business Review articles followed as well. Even perhaps more strange to me personally however was the fixation I noticed that the western world had on the Just-in-Time pillar of ...
Continue reading this entry »
|
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Sunday, July 25, 2010 |
Kevin Meyer and his organization were kind enough to invite me to his company a couple of years ago to introduce the basic concepts of the TWI Job Methods (JM) program. JM is a very easy way to introduce some of the fundamental concepts of improvement to most any organization. JM falls short of capturing the entirety of Kaizen or the Toyota Production System (TPS) and that was never its intent. However as I like to tell people it is an easy first step for a lot of places looking to improve and develop internal resources.
The exact date of the ...
Continue reading this entry »
|
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Monday, July 12, 2010 |
I appreciate the reality that people need to see success stories about Lean or any topic for that matter in order to further their interest with the topic and move onto action. We are all somewhat risk averse by nature I suspect due to the way we evolved. For example you go over there and eat the purple berry on the bush and if you survive then perhaps I'll give it a try! Implementing Lean or any improvement methodology has a bit of that conservative bias to overcome.
If you are interested in some Lean success stores then I recommend reading ...
Continue reading this entry »
|
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Sunday, June 27, 2010 |
How do you build a culture such that problems are seen as opportunities for improvement? It all starts at the top and cascades down from there in my opinion. Employees are somewhat like young children in a family. They tend to model and reinforce behavioral norms that they see around them especially traits from senior leaders. In Toyota's case there are lots of roots to examine that influenced the company's culture and development with respect to this dimension.
For starters there are the five Toyoda Precepts attributed to founder Sakichi Toyoda and codified by his sons Kiichiro and Risaburo in 1935. ...
Continue reading this entry »
|
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Saturday, June 5, 2010 |
I think Tom Ehrenfeld asks an interesting question for us to consider. In its shorter form "How do you convince others to be lean?" I'll go out on a limb and say that you don't. Or more specifically at least that I don't bother trying to. Leaders have to decide for themselves what to do and how to go about doing it to a large extent. Otherwise they are not real leaders in my opinion. Sure they might need some assistance but I have never seen a very successful company of any type that did not have excellent leadership. So ...
Continue reading this entry »
|
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Thursday, May 13, 2010 |
The difference between innovation and lean will depend a lot upon semantics and whose definition of "innovation" and "lean" we are using. For whatever reason the innovation tag seems to be applied a lot in situations where people are looking to improve products. The lean tag seems to get applied to factories trying to improve production processes. Successful companies though will need to work upon improving products, processes, and their people as well.
In Toyota the concepts of respect for people and continuous improvement (Kaizen) are the pillars of the system. Kaizen has a strange connotation to me at least here ...
Continue reading this entry »
|
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Monday, April 26, 2010 |
Robert's question reminds me of the caption to an article in Business Week that I read on an airplane a few days ago. The article refers to the "perils of running too lean" and highlights how John Deere is losing sales due to a longer lead-time than the competition. The article implies that more inventory would automatically result in more sales and higher profits. I have no specific knowledge on the John Deere case and can't comment on that with any factual insight. I can highlight several common mistakes that are made regarding Toyota's Just-in-Time concept.
For starters the Toyota Production ...
Continue reading this entry »
|
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 |
This topic strikes a chord with comments I have made in the past regarding the state of Lean at least in the United States. Unfortunately I do feel that the Lean movement is often guilty of under emphasizing quality at times. Of course this is just a broad characterization and I am not speaking about my colleagues here on this site or directly about any company in particular. Let me try and explain my viewpoint.
The Toyota Production System for many years was depicted as having two pillars. One was the famous Just-in-Time Pillar and the other was the less well ...
Continue reading this entry »
|
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Monday, April 5, 2010 |
I have witnessed plenty of Lean versus Six Sigma zealot arguments over the years at various client sites and at different conference settings. I think Tom is trying to stir the pot with this question :-) Somehow I seem to manage to find a way to offend both camps with my standard responses which I will outline below.
I'll start my answer however with an interesting side story. Back around the year 2000 I was part of an effort in McKinsey & Company to look at what Fortune 100 companies were using for improvement methodologies. At that time we estimated that ...
Continue reading this entry »
|
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Monday, March 15, 2010 |
I think the analogy between thermodynamics and organizational dynamics is an interesting one to consider. It certainly made me stop and think for a couple of days. After mulling on the topic I have personal doubts regarding whether we can come up with laws for organizations as neatly as physicists did for the body of work known as thermodynamics. Even if we do the laws certainly won’t be as quantitative or specific.
I'd like to point out that on a personal level laws in science carry a very positive connotation for me when I think about them. However the notion carries ...
Continue reading this entry »
|
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Thursday, February 25, 2010 |
There are multiple parts to Professor Rob Austin's latest question so I am going to break it up and attempt to deal with the parts that struck me as most interesting in the paragraphs below.
For starters Professor Austin would like to generally know what can Lean do about this type of situation which unfortunately is typical whether it be in manufacturing or service type of operations. I hate to sound like a broken record but I always remind companies that we have to learn to first specify either what are the exact problems or ...
Continue reading this entry »
|
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 |
I think the long term maintenance of any system is fairly difficult. In Toyota's case we are seeing that even very good companies can stumble and struggle to maintain their previous levels of performance. I don't know if the right analogy here is a fad diet as Jeff Liker alluded to or perhaps the 12 steps of AA? In either case as Michael points out the first step is establishing that there is a problem and being willing to talk about it.
For all my time in Toyota I never really thought that Toyota's problem ...
Continue reading this entry »
|
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Friday, February 5, 2010 |
Tom Ehrenfeld asks that I not reflect on where Toyota went wrong. However it is difficult to answer his series of five questions without at least touching upon this topic at least tangentially. I will rephrase and order Tom's questions down below so that I can respond to them one by one from my point of view.
Q1. What remains to be learned from this situation?
I'd say a lot still remains to be learned. With respect to Toyota's quality problems the seeds in my opinion were planted in the mid 1990's when the company at least behind closed doors started talking ...
Continue reading this entry »
|
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Sunday, January 17, 2010 |
Peter Senge asks a tough but fair question regarding discovery of the depth of the personal commitment it takes to lead successful change and how do you teach that reality. In all honesty I don't think any person or organization has discovered a bullet proof answer to this question. I know for a fact that Toyota struggles with this problem especially recently in their organization. Even back in the 1980's and 1990's internally many in Toyota were fretting about the fact it was growing too rapidly and that it was increasingly difficult to teach the next generation. Today the ...
Continue reading this entry »
|
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Wednesday, January 6, 2010 |
Prof. Austin's most recent question strikes a chord with me as I think it unfortunately highlights an important aspect of lean or TPS that is not accurately depicted in the world today. Like most people when I started working for Toyota in Japan I sat through the standard half day introduction to TPS put on at that time by the education department. The second or third overhead transparency shown to us was the following simple equation for discussion purposes:
Profits = (Sales Price - Cost) x Volume
There are three ways to manipulate profit in this equation. 1) Increase prices, 2) Sell ...
Continue reading this entry »
|
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Friday, January 1, 2010 |
Tom Ehrenfeld asks an interesting question (link). I like to tell people that there is both an "art" and a "science" to doing lean in a healthy meaningful way that will deliver sustained results. The science part for example is the ability to analyze an operation in detail in terms of time, motion, the work elements, the types of waste involved, and the basic physics of the process (cutting forces for metal removal, welding, etc.) understand root causes and make improvements. The Toyota Production System has lots of simple tools to help people analyze their jobs, spot waste, and then ...
Continue reading this entry »
|
|
By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull and co-author of A3 Thinking
- Last updated: Sunday, December 6, 2009 |
I can empathize with the fears and connotations associated with the term “Lean” in the question posed by Prof. Austin. The term Lean was coined in the United States by a team associated with MIT researching the Toyota Production System. Internally at Toyota we never used the term “Lean” and I have always been somewhat uncomfortable with it for several of the reasons stated above.
In order to address some of the fears and items mentioned by Prof. Austin. I think there are several actions that need to take place when getting started ...
Continue reading this entry »
Question of the moment 
Sandrine Olivencia
Operae Partners