Up to this point I have resisted weighing in on the Toyota quality story largely because: I don’t have anymore insight than anyone else. The signal-to-noise ratio in the story seems really low, and I didn’t feel I would contribute much. But there is another story in the back channels of the “lean” community. Many [...]
Popular Mechanics online has a nice little article describing how the infamous accelerator pedal actually works. I am posting the link here so that we might be better informed when fielding the inevitable questions that seem to come the way of “lean experts.” http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/how_to/4347704.html
John Shook’s latest column on lean.org is titled “Was NUMMI a Success?” He adds some interesting thought to the mix of the ongoing post-mortem on GM and NUMMI. John argues (successfully, I think) that Toyota’s objectives for NUMMI were to learn how to take their system outside of the safe cocoon of Toyota City in [...]
Toyota to end Calif. joint venture with GM – Yahoo! News. The joint venture was developed to have American workers learn Toyota’s production methods, which were much leaner and more efficient. [emphasis added] Maybe that was GM’s intention – to “fix” the workforce. This fits in with the judgment I developed about GM’s leadership over [...]
Toyota says it may shut Fremont’s NUMMI auto plant – San Jose Mercury News Part of the aftermath of GM’s implosion is that Toyota is left holding the bag on the NUMMI joint venture. The plant primarily built vehicles for GM (the Pontiac Vibe), but was essentially managed by Toyota as a Toyota operation. A [...]
I am a big fan of Jim Collins. His book Good to Great outlines attributes that I have seen in every successful organizational transformation. Now he has a new book out. I haven’t read it yet, so I am not going to offer a review, just tell you about it. But the title and premise [...]
In a previous post, I talked about Steven Spear’s observation about how a sensei saw a process and the problems. Jeffery Liker, Mike Hoseus and David Meier have done a good job capturing how a sensei teaches and summed it up in a diagram in the book Toyota Culture. (for those of you following at [...]
The Lean Enterprise Institute has recently published Kaizen Express, an overview of the classic characteristics of “lean manufacturing” and, by implication, the Toyota Production System. As I set out to review the book, I found myself heading in two directions. One is the content of the book itself. Over the years, there have been a [...]
The Lean Enterprise Institute is taking up a “Back to Basics” theme. But what, exactly, are “the basics” of the Toyota Production System? This is critically important. Permit me to cite an analogy. Look at a house. What do you see? What would you say are “the basics?” At first glance, all houses have walls, [...]
Toyota Offering Buyouts To 18,000 U.S. Workers Clearly this is an interesting development.The question in my mind is whether it will represent the same kind of sea change that occurred in 1947.