Thoughts and Insights from the Shop Floor
“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, …
Continue reading “Toyota Kata: Don’t Change The Target Condition Date”
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 …
I’ve been asked to explain the relationship between “Toyota Kata” and Kaizen Events, and I am guessing that the person asking the question isn’t the only one who has the question, so I thought I’d take a crack at it here. To answer this question, I need to define what I mean when I say …
A lot of the organizations I deal with have a legacy with Six Sigma, or some x-Sigma variant. If they are now trying to incorporate Toyota Kata as a way to shift their daily behavior, questions arise about how it fits (or might fit, or whether it fits) with DMAIC. This sometimes comes about when …
Continuing my observations about old patterns that get in people’s way as they try to practice Toyota Kata… “What obstacles do you think are preventing you from reaching the target?” (I also like to insert the word “now” in there sometimes to emphasize what I am writing about here.) The intent (and to be clear, …
Continue reading “Toyota Kata: Obstacles Are Not Action Items”
I’ll admit right up front that the headline is worded to attract search engines. If that’s how you got here, be prepared to think. Can You Prove That This Works This is something I hear a lot: “I can see where _____ applies to your example. But my process is __(different somehow) ___. Fill in …
A friend, and reader, Craig sent a really interesting email: As I was practicing the coaching Kata with one of the First Mates on the factory trawler, whenever an issue arose (usually with the leader blaming an employee) he began asking factory and engineering leadership “what needed to be communicated?” or “what needed to be …
Continue reading “Competence and Clarity: Toyota Kata at Sea”