Thoughts and Insights from the Shop Floor
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 …
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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 …
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In the Improvement Kata, the “learner” is not only learning the thinking pattern, she is becoming an expert on the process being improved.
“What obstacles do you think are preventing you from reaching the target condition?” When the coach asks that question, she is curious about what the learner / improver believes are the unresolved issues, sources of variation, problems, etc. that are preventing the process from operating routinely the way it should (as defined by the target …
A target condition has three main elements: An achieve-by date. A level of performance that will be achieved. The operational process that will be in place. The details of the #2 and #3 can take a number of forms, but today I want to talk about the achieve-by date. Keep the time horizon fairly short, …
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Jeff asked about a seeming contradiction between hoshin kanri and Toyota Kata. In this post, I try to clear that up.
I’m about four months into helping a major regional hospital develop a solid foundation for applying the Improvement Kata and Coaching Kata to learn “improvement thinking.” They now have active improvement boards running in pre-op, post-op, surgery, radiology, the lab, the emergency department, the cardio-vascular floor, medical-surgery floor, ICU, cardiac rehab, billing, admissions, case management, …
I’ve run into a couple of cases where there is an initiative from a corporate continuous improvement team to “implement Toyota Kata.” Aside from trying to proscribe each and every step of the way (which runs counter to the entire point of discovering the solution – “you omitted step 7b”), they also expect reports of …