Toyota Way (Final part)

TPS tools help us in achieving Toyota way. The below two principles help us in understanding the TPS tools more effectively and most commonly used terms hereafter.

Kaizen:

Kai- Change

Zen- Good

So Kaizen means change for good. Any improvement (small or big) done to eliminate waste is called Kaizen.

 Kaizen has to be done to reduce the gap either in occurrence type or setting type. This change for good should happen continuously and so the term ‘Continuous improvement’.

Kaizen is not innovation; the following table from one of the earlier Japanese text books (1986) helps me in validating my statement.

  
Reducing any of the listed below 7 types of Muda (Waste) is called kaizen.

  
As mentioned earlier, Overproduction is the biggest muda and it leads to all other muda’s (as you read in the example of Curious case of vegetable seller) and so it should be attacked first.

 Muda is present in all the processes. Any process will have only 20 to 30% processing time and 70 to 80% non processing time. We must develop critical eye in order to eliminate muda from the non processing time. Of course there will be some muda in the processing time too, but the scope is less if the process is designed as per standard work.

   This also reminds me of the famous quote by Robert Bosch.

 “There is nothing that cannot be improved further”

Genchi Genbutsu:

This is always associated with 3G:

1)    Gemba: Actual place.

2)    Genbutsu: Actual thing.

3)    Genjitsu: Actual situation.

 Imagine Sherlock Holmes sitting at his desk and solving crimes. Funny isn’t it?

Same applies to the Engineers or Managers who sit in office and try to analyze causes for the problems in the shop floor. 

Genchi Genbutsu means ‘Go and See’ at the actual place (Gemba) to truly understand the actual thing in the actual situation.

 Taiichi Ohno used to draw circles in the shop floor and asked Engineers to stand inside the circle and observe the process for improvement which is now widely known as ‘Ohno circles’. 

 ‘Seeing is believing’ approach helps in identifying the exact root cause for the problem as well as to identify the waste in the process. The longer we observe the process, more the number of problems that comes to the surface. No problem is the biggest problem!

 These are the steps that can be followed here:

1.    When a problem arises, go to the actual place; observe the actual thing at the actual 

      time (Situation).

2.    Identify the problem.

3.    Take temporary or counter measure on the spot.

4.    Find the root cause and take a permanent measure.

5.    Standardize the solution to prevent recurrence of the problem.

 A request to managers and supervisors is to ensure at least they spend quarter of their time in the actual work place. This will keep more than half of their troubles away.

Management by walking around in HP:

•          In the early days of Hewlett-Packard (H-P), Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett devised an active management style that they called Management by Walking around (MBWA). Senior H-P managers were seldom at their desks. They spent most of their days visiting employees, customers, and suppliers. This direct contact with key people provided them with a solid grounding from which viable strategies could be crafted.

•         Going to the source is not limited to only production but to any field of work. Once we start observing the process, we must build a habit of questioning ourselves again and again. Preferably Why Why Why? Till we get a solution/root cause to our problem. These problems are golden eggs. Why’s are not limited to just 5 times. That’s a myth. Sometimes we might get the solution at 2^nd time or 20^th time of asking ‘why’. 5 why is the name of a technique and not limited to just 5 why’s! It’s a thumb rule to ask why a minimum of 5 times to go to the root of the problem.

Most of the times, this analysis leads to the Method we are following and need to improve that.

Let’s take a simple example to understand this theory.

Bulb is not switching on

Why?

There is no power supply to the bulb.

Why?

The fuse is not working.

Why?

There is no power supply to the fuse.

Why?

There is no power supply in the wire.

Why?

The socket is damaged.

Why?

The plug was not put correctly.

So the root cause here is plug was not put correctly and hence the socket was damaged. The socket should be replaced and care must be taken while inserting the plug.

As you can observe in this analysis, instead of replacing the socket, if the bulb or fuse was replaced, then the problem would have not been solved. Taking a wrong countermeasure is not only a waste of time and money but also might cause more problems.

Another key point to remember here is the verification of the 5 why. 5 why can be verified if it satisfies the therefore condition. Let’s verify my root cause.

The plug was not put correctly therefore the socket was damaged, therefore there was no power supply in the wire, therefore there was no power supply to the fuse, therefore the fuse was not working, therefore there is no power supply to the bulb, therefore the bulb is not switching on.

If it doesn’t satisfy this condition, then there is a mistake in the analysis.

I will give one of the 5 why analysis done by me to eliminate wrong part supply to customer.

Please do the therefore analysis and give feedback to me .

This completes the Toyota way module.