Becoming lean john shook lean manufacturing

Toyota Production System“Lean Manufacturing”

John Y. Shook. “Bringing the Toyota Production System to the United States: A Personal Perspective”

Included as Chapter 2 of:Becoming Lean: Inside Stories of U. S. Manufacturers

Jeffrey K. Liker, Editor(Portland, OR: Productivity Press, 1998)

April 7, 2023 [email protected] 1

Underlying Assumptions

The concepts mass production and lean production reflect ways of thinking about production – the assumptions that underlie how people and institutions formulate solutions to the problems of organizing people, equipment, material, and capital to create and deliver products for customers.

Mass and lean are paradigms that reflect and inform the thinking about production within particular cultures and eras.



Underlying Assumptions

Lean manufacturing includes a set of techniques that comprise a system that derives from a philosophy.

The tremendous benefits promised by the lean paradigm can be actualized only if we understand and implement accordingly.

15 years after John Shook began his training in Japan, he was still struggling alongside much of U. S. Industry to understand what it was that he had been trained in and had also trained.



Lesson One: Learn by Doing

Making a car: you stamp it, paint it, stuff it, and ship it. The process is deceptively simple. (Jim Womack)

Taiichi Ohno had a small and diverse market in Japan, and he (and Nissan) had to meet all of that diversity, because the government closed the market (for 25 years, with U.S. approval)

Originally Toyota copied Detroit, but Ohno had none of the economies of scale. In 1950 he was producing 1,000 vehicles a month – what a Ford assembly line was producing in a day.



Lesson Two: Economies of Scale

You can attain greater overall system efficiency through concerted efforts to eliminate waste thoroughly (rather than through economies of scale).

You can survive and thrive in low growth. The system from the early 1970’s is little changed today. The

two most basic concepts are simple. One is to make what customers want when they want it, nothing more and nothing less. The other is to treat people with respect. This with 15,000 parts per car and 5,000 people producing a quality car a minute.




Jidoka means – “autonomation” – built-in quality – the quality principle – respect for humans system – automation with a human touch (a coined term, even in Japan).

Basically jidoka means building in quality and designing operations and equipment so that people are not tied to machines but are free to perform value-added work that is appropriate for humans. (If people are stuck watching machines, who is working for whom?)


The Two Pillars: Jidoka and Just-in-time



Toyota defines just-in-time (JIT) as “the right part at the right time in the right amount” (“at the right place”).

JIT is one of the most well-known and least understood buzzwords of modern manufacturing.

Moving inventories around without reducing them or shortening lead times is not JIT.


The Two Pillars: Jidoka and Just-in-time


Lesson Three: Transferring Technologies

Transferring technologies around the world is easier said than done. JIT, more than any other of the system mechanics, visibly distinguishes TPS from conventional manufacturing.

JIT is a solution to the nightmare of trying to coordinate all of the parts and materials that go into an automobile.

Often, we fight complexity with complexity. JIT, however, instructs us to learn to respond quickly and to roll with the chaos.


Easier Said Than Done


Lesson Three: Transferring Technologies

If you an understand the following two assumptions, you can understand JIT: Production plans always change. Production will never go according to plan, anyway.

Toyota’s JIT is a system unto itself comprised of pull system, one-piece flow, and takt time, all of which are integrated with Toyota’s heijunka method of production scheduling.

The rest of JIT just will not work well without heijunka.


Easier Said Than Done


Heijunka is a leveling of production (volume and variety). Production by heijunka:

Creates a steady demand of resources, Shortens the lead time of individual product variation, Enables the leveling of the production process.

Without heijunka, muda (waste) will build up increasingly from beginning to end.

Toyota establishes heijunka production planning on a monthly basis, but does not lock in the actual production sequence.


Lesson Three: Transferring Technologies Heijunka


“Production plans will always change; production will never go according to plan, anyway.”

Usually we deal with the complexities of production scheduling with equally complex forecasting and scheduling systems.

In TPS, internal “customers” pull orders from internal “suppliers” when they need it based on “sales” to their internal “customers”.

TPS fights complexity with simplicity – no forecasting schedules for every process. No continuous reforecasting.


Lesson Three: Transferring Technologies Pull System: The Kanban System


Kanban is the Japanese word for “sign”. Kanban cards travel with the parts and include part number, quantity, location, etc. Usually small containers of a predetermined number of parts.

If everyone follows the handful of clear rules for proper usage, the kanban system is a foolproof way of making the right part at the right time in the right amount.

With the entire material and information flow transparent to everyone, problems surface earlier and easier, and solutions and improvements are easier to discover and implement.


Lesson Three: Transferring Technologies Pull System: The Kanban System


Once we have a “customer pull”, we want simply to flow everything one piece at a time.

One-piece flow gets material from point A to point B with the shortest lead time and least amount of work-in-process in between.

True one-piece flow would have no waiting time, no queuing, and no batches.


Lesson Three: Transferring Technologies One-Piece Flow


Ideally all operations would be one-piece flow, but technology sometimes won’t allow this.

But it is always the goal and it is the philosophy. If we focus on how to reduce lead time, everything else will

come along. The path to reducing lead time is one-piece flow.


Lesson Three: Transferring Technologies One-Piece Flow


Takt time is the tool to link production to the customer by matching the pace of production to the pace of actual final sales. Think musical meter and metronome.

If blue Celicas are selling at a rate of one every half hour, we should build one every half hour. And if half of those are air-conditioned, then every other one on the line should have air.

You calculate actual tact time for each product and part. That determines the number of seconds you need in each actual process in the entire production chain.

Takt times are determined in the heijunka plan, once a month.


Lesson Three: Transferring Technologies Takt Time


Determining the takt time is usually where to begin in establishing a JIT system.

How many “supplier” parts are required by “customers”? How can we (then) create a process that can fulfill that

need with a minimum of waste and in the shortest lead time?

Minimum waste and shortest lead time should lead to the same solution.


Lesson Three: Transferring Technologies Takt Time


Producing according to takt time puts customer needs out in front of everyone all the time.

People need to understand clearly the reasons for changing the way they do things.

Ohno believed that without a crisis no company would be capable of successfully making the shift to lean

At Toyota all proposals are challenged to demonstrate the need. “Never tell your staff what to do. Whenever you do that, you

take the responsibility away from them.”


Lesson Four: Begin From Need


Lay out a problem. Ask for an analysis or a proposal, but always stop short of saying “Do this.”

The employee develops the solution (also should be finding the problem, too).

The manager is the “judge and jury” while the employee has the “burden of proof” to justify the solution proposal.

Say “No” a lot – three times, five times, ten times if necessary. “Never tell your staff what to do. Whenever you do that, you

take the responsibility away from them.”


Lesson Four: Begin From Need


This is the famous “bottom-up decision making.” It isn’t decision

making at all! It is solution proposal making! “Bottom- up” is not some kind of enlightened form of democratic

self-management where the worker decides what to do. But nobody is telling anyone else what to do. It is a beautiful

answer to the control-flexibility dilemma in all organizations. The company gets basic adherence to corporate direction, and

the workers are free to explore best possible real solutions to problems they themselves know best.


Lesson Four: Begin From NeedPolicy Management: As Revolutionary as TPS


This is policy management – a management system or decision making process that is probably as revolutionary as TPS itself.

It is a system that is flexible and changes continuously, yet does not accept change lightly or without strong justification.

Policy deployment on a yearly basis and PDCA (plan, do, check, action) on a daily basis.

Policy management is not policy deployment (a prioritization process in which the objectives are “deployed” into the organization), but it should evolve from policy deployment.


Lesson Four: Begin From NeedPolicy Management: As Revolutionary as TPS


“The ability to focus on solving problems without pointing fingers and looking to place the blame on someone.”

(Takeaway of NUMMI Americans at Toyota City)

“No problem” sounds-out like “Monday night” in Japanese. “No problem” is a problem because there are always issues that

require some kind of “countermeasusure”; or at least there are always better ways to accomplish a given task. Always.

Standardized work, kaizen, and placing as much responsibility as possible at as “low” a level as possible. This is what makes it possible for a Toyota worksite to essentially run itself.


Lesson Five: Ask the 5 Whys, Not the 5 Whos


With standardized work, best practice is assured and becomes the baseline for further improvement, or kaizen.

No deviation from current standards is allowed, but if someone has a better idea, that idea is easily proposed, approved, and implemented (and rewarded), and becomes the new standard.

Workers give a suggestion every 3 days or so. Also, takt time changes every month (heijunka plan), and the standardized work has to match the takt times. Change is good.

Workers continually redesign their jobs; workers are engineers; engineers are managers; and managers are psychologists.


Lesson Five: Ask the 5 Whys, Not the 5 WhosStandardized Work Alters Roles


However unrealistic the implementation of TPS may be in a particular instance, the ideals of TPS are still the ideals. “You maybe can’t do one-piece flow out of stamping…yet.”

Even 13 years after the birth of the joint GM-Toyota venture NUMMI (New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc.) in Fremont, CA, employees were wholly supportive…but…

NUMMI had high quality Corollas and trucks, and a totally new human resources system and a sense of membership…

“What is the nature of our company-employee relationship? Commitment from management and trust from the employees.


Lesson Six: Don’t Confuse T’sPS with the TPS


Employee motivation comes from (management) assuring membership (to the employee) in the organization, whatever the price tag.

Toyota, even in Japan, does not guarantee lifetime employment. What an employer can do is make lay-offs (clearly) a last resort. Then real trust can develop between the company and

employees, along with the motivation for employees to accept responsibility and ownership.

“Never tell your staff what to do. Whenever you do that, you take the responsibility away from them.”


Lesson Seven: Employee Motivation


TPS Debate TPS Authority 1: “We’ll focus almost entirely on the plant floor,

just demonstrating how to implement. As companies implement and begin to understand, they can do their own training.”

TPS Authority 2: “But Americans need a rulebook. They don’t like to play a game when they don’t know the rules. So we have to give them the rules.”

TPS Authority 1: “But there is no rulebook for TPS. If there is, please give it to me; I want it, too. If you try to simplify it and carve it in stone, it will lose its essence. All we can do is teach guidelines and principles and demonstrate how to use the tools.”



The kaizen workshop is a way to bring TPS to the shop floor. These are events of intensive team involvement for 4-5 days.

Day 1 – training and explanation of the kaizen goals (not just “kaizen for kaizen’s sake,” which becomes “change for change’s sake”).

Day 2 – developing a kaizen plan from a given detailed current state analysis. Day 3 – implementing the plan (moving equipment, changing operator

movement, revising material and information flow). Day 4 – fix what didn’t work from Day 3. Day 5 – reporting to management and have confirmation of follow-up items.

What’s good about kaizen workshops is their action focus. It’s not so good if they’re not used as a strategic part of a larger plan to get from here to there, and knowing where there is.


Lesson Seven: Employee MotivationKaizen Workshop


The thinking of TPS (or lean) applies to any function. It works because it is a way of thinking; a whole systems philosophy.

Lean thinking gives a broad perspective on providing goods and services that goes beyond the bottom line and the stodgy principles of mass-producing capitalism.

It is a human system – customer focused, customer driven – in which employees are also customers.

Lean asks: “What adds value for my customer?” and reveals a transparency that allows any work situation to be easily understood at a glance, and always open for improvement.


Lean Off the Plant Floor


Yes, we’ve improved quality, but at what cost? How much better is our in-plant, first-time-through performance?

We’ve moved inventories around, but have we scrapped batch and queue for flow? Have we trashed our complex push scheduling systems for customer demand-based pull?

Are we focusing on shortening lead times through eliminating waste and its sources?

Have we built human resource systems that make people integral members of the enterprise?

Have we adopted the philosophy and the way of thinking?


Lesson Eight: There Are No Experts



Veritas


Thank You!

Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process Managing to Learn by Toyota veteran John Shook, reveals the thinking underlying the vital A3 management process at the heart of lean management and lean leadership. Constructed as a dialogue between a manager and his boss, the book explains how A3 thinking helps managers and executives identify, frame, and then act on problems and challenges. Shook calls this approach, which is captured in the simple structure of an A3 report, the key to Toyota's entire system of developing talent and continually deepening its knowledge and capabilities. The A3 Report is a Toyota-pioneered practice of getting the problem, the analysis, the corrective actions, and the action plan down on a single sheet of large (A3) paper, often with the use of graphics. A3 paper is the international term for a large sheet of paper, roughly equivalent to the 11-by-17-inch U.S. sheet. The widespread adoption of the A3 process standardizes a methodology for innovating, planning, problem-solving, and building foundational structures for sharing a broader and deeper form of thinking that produces organizational learning deeply rooted in the work itself, says Shook. Management expert James Womack predicts Managing to Learn will have a deep impact on the way lean companies manage people. He believes readers will learn an underlying way of thinking that reframes all activities as learning activities at every level of the organization, whether it's standardized work and kaizen at the individual level, system kaizen at the managerial level, or fundamental strategic decisions at the corporate level. A unique layout puts the thoughts of a lean manager struggling to apply the A3 process to a key project on one side of the page and the probing questions of the boss who is coaching him through the process on the other side. As a result, readers learn how to write a powerful A3 - while learning why the technique is at the core of lean management and lean leadership.

Paperback: 138 pages Publisher: Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc.; 1 edition (January 2008)


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Becoming lean john shook lean manufacturing