Thoughts and Insights from the Shop Floor
I recently did an “Introduction to Toyota Kata” session for Kata School Cascadia. The intent is to give an overview of my interpretation of the background, and how Toyota Kata fits into, and augments, your Continuous Improvement effort. Here is a direct URL in case you can’t see the embed on your phone or pad: …
Andrea brought up an interesting point in our weekly open Toyota Kata discussion. She noted that as the coaching conversation became more and more fluid, it tended to become more like a report-out from the learner than coaching them. That got me thinking about a couple of things. Reverse Coaching Something I think I have …
Sometimes the situation arises where the learner has been beating her head against an obstacle with little or no luck overcoming it. The question comes up: When is it OK to give up and switch to something else. The answer is, of course, a little situational. (Consultant speak: It depends…) The natural progression of the …
Outside of the actual operation, the default meeting schedule for most organizations is weekly. This is OK when everyone understands what is expected and the default thinking and behavior is working for you. With Toyota Kata, though, the intent is to practice a routine that is not default thinking or behavior. Yet many organizations fall …
Continue reading “The Perils of Weekly Toyota Kata Coaching”
The default Starter Kata for “Grasp the Current Condition” places heavy emphasis on takt time and variation in timing of a regular process. However a lot of processes, both within manufacturing as well as in other domains such as health care, don’t seem to have any kind of regular heartbeat. As Steve Medland pointed out …
Continue reading “Toyota Kata: What If There Is No Takt Time?”
I am still digesting my experience at the Toyota Kata Summit (KataCon) and the TWI Summit but I wanted to reflect on one of the emerging themes, and some of the reactions. One of the themes that emerged at both conferences – and to be clear, something I had a hand in influencing as well …
When I landed in Detroit last week to visit Menlo Innovations, Mike Rother picked me up at the airport. As soon as I settled in to the passenger’s seat, he handed me my long-anticipated copy of his new book The Toyota Kata Practice Guide. That is the first disclaimer here. The second disclaimer is that …
Continue reading “Mike Rother: The Toyota Kata Practice Guide”
I have been telling everyone who will listen to read Rich Sheridan’s book Joy, Inc. ever since I came across and read it in the fall of 2015. Fast forward to earlier this year when Lean Frontiers sent out their request for suggested keynote speakers for KataCon. I wrote to Mike Rother and asked him …
The “Five Questions” are a very effective way to structure a coaching / learning conversation when all parties are more or less comfortable with the process. Some learners, however, seriously struggle with both the thinking pattern and the process of improvement itself. They can get so focused on answering the 5 questions “correctly” that they …
Continue reading “Toyota Kata: Reflection on Coaching Struggling Learners”
In the Improvement Kata, the “learner” is not only learning the thinking pattern, she is becoming an expert on the process being improved.