The Toyota Way 

In this article I'd like to take you through my take on the Fourteen
Management Principles from Toyota as described by Jeffery K. Liker
in his excellent book The Toyota Way

"The Toyota Way"   -  The Fourteen Management Principles

"Base your management decisions on a long term philosophy, even at the expense of short term
financial goals"

Adopting Lean thinking as a way of running your organisation should never be seen as a quick fix to save some
money. One of my favourite quotes which I have pinned up in my office is from Henry Ford:-

"A business that makes nothing but money, is a poor kind of business"

It's all about doing the right thing for your customers. Adopting Lean thinking into your organisation should be seen
as a long term philosophy to help staff change from a "cannot do" to a "can do" culture.

It's winning hearts and minds that will lead to long term sustainability and success.

Principle

"Create continuous improvement flow to bring problems to the surface"

The task of creating flow forces you to think about the design and layout of your current process.

Where is there waiting time in your process and why?

Ask why five times to get to the root causes of poor flow.

There are many causes of poor flow, but just a few of the usual suspects
are as follows :-

Principle

"Use pull systems to avoid "overproduction" only produce what the customer wants"

Taichii Ohno the father of kaizen and the Toyota Production System based it
on three very simple but effective principles.

The ultimate in pull systems is obviously one piece flow where only one piece
of work is pulled at a time.

Where geography is difficult then "kanban" can be used as a visual clue when to "pull" work.

Creating a pull system prevents the previous process from over-producing and pushing work
onto the next process.

Principle

"Level out the workload"

By smoothing out the workload we avoid batching work.
For instance, I've see many instances where a manager has to sign important documents. They allow
the work to build up until they have a large quantity and then spend several hours blasting through them.

This leads to delays in other parts of the process that require their approval.

Far better, where practical, to sign off a few each day and smooth out the
workload.

Principle

"Build a culture of stopping to fix problems to get quality right first time"

Toyota often talk about the concept of jidoka or automatically building in defect detection that stop your
process when an error occurs.

Whether automated detection or not, the basic concept of never passing on an error to the next stage of
your process is fundamental to Toyota thinking.

As Masaaki Imai the author of Gemba Kaizen states

"Never, ever, ever pass a reject to your customer

Don't get it, don't make it, don't send it"

There are three basic questions to ask when you have a process
or quality problem.

Pareto analysis can also be a great way to identify the chronic errors that are having the biggest
impact on your process.

Principle

"Standardised tasks are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment"

Quoting Taichii Ohno again,

"Where there is no standard, there can be no improvement"

I like to think of standard operations as creating "the best known
way of doing things"

Once we've agreed the best known way we need to train, train,
and train until it becomes the new way.

Once this baseline has been adopted then we need to review our
process again and identify further improvements.

Often Deming's PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) Cycle can be a useful
way to identify and implement improvements.

PDCA does not stand for Please Don't Change Anything, by the way!

"Use visual control so no problems are hidden"

To me this principle is all about eliminating information deficit.

The 3S or sort, straighten and sustain is a great strategy to
create a system where visual control can become possible.

The old idea of "A place for everything and everything in its place"
still holds true in most business situations.

Visual Control is fundamental to identifying waste. It is easy
to state but is often difficult for many organisations to
adopt successfully.

Principle

"Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and processes"

KISS... Keep it simple stupid. Often we purchase the "latest"
equipment that will "solve" all of our problems.

In many instances 80% of the features on new equipment are not required or not understood by the
average person that needs to use it.

There are so many bells and whistles that it has many opportunities
not to work !

Rather than buy by 3 pieces of kit that are simple, and will help
create flow, we purchase one expensive "large capacity" piece of
kit that is over complicated and prevents flow.

"Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work live the philosophy and teach it to others"

People need to live eat and think about eliminating waste from their business processes.

If Leadership do not understand the fundamental principles of Lean Thinking and have not got
"their hands dirty" by physically applying the principles then it is very hard to lead the changes
required towards perfection.

The best way to learn is by teaching and coaching others.

Learning by doing is fundamental to long term success.

You need to try things and experiment.

Quick and basic vs. slow and complicated.

Principle

"Develop exceptional people and teams who follow your company's philosophy"

Adopting the Lean philosophy creates a set of standards of "behaviour" that people need to take on
board if they want to be part of the change for good.

Leadership need to understand the principles and then encourage others to "just do it". Lean is all

 about developing people who are willing to take personal action to make things better.

Principle

"Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping
them improve"

We need to be in partnership with our suppliers and create win win situations. We need to avoid talking through "contracts " and beating up suppliers on "price".

I believe it is important to get your own house in order before you start "telling" your suppliers that they need to become Lean.

Principle

"Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation"

Go to the Gemba. Taichii Ohno used to make new managers
stand in a circle on the shop floor and observe what was going on.

By going and spending time in the area that your are trying to improve you can very quickly understand the
situation and observe and identify any waste first hand. You can't do this stuck behind your desk looking at a spreadsheet.

Principle

"Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options; implement decisions rapidly"

Although engaging with stakeholders and exploring different ideas before coming up with potential solutions can
take slightly longer ,in my experience implementation becomes a lot faster and easier as people have developed
a high degree of ownership for the action being taken.

Principle

"Become a learning organisation through relentless reflection and continuous improvement"

You are only as good as your last report card. We must never become complacent and must strive to think of
ways of making improvements every day.

People often ask me what was my favourite kaizen blitz event.

I always reply "The next one".

In Conclusion

I hope you have enjoyed my quick tour through the fourteen Toyota Management Principles.

You can get the book The Toyota Way here

Hope this helps.

Best regards,

Graham Ross

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