Tag: Leadership

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What Can You Do For Me?

I have probably written around this question in the past, but it comes up often enough that I wanted to address is specifically.

One of the challenges facing the lean practitioner is the “What can you do for me?” boss (or client).

This manager wants to know the expected ROI and outcome of your proposal before he agrees to make the investment in improvement.

This style of proposal-evaluation-decision management is exactly what is taught in every business school in the world. The process of management is a process of deciding between alternative courses of action, including no action at all.

This approach actually creates “no action” as the baseline. Any change is going to disrupt the status-quo and incur some kind of cost. Therefore, the thinking goes, the change better be worth it. “Am I going to get enough back?”

“What can you do for me?” implies a general sense of satisfaction with the status quo.

The lean thinker reverses this model. The status quo is a stagnant and dangerous place.

There is always an improved state that we are striving for.

Rather than measuring progress from the current state, we are measuring remaining gap to the target, and we must close that gap.

There are problems in the way.

Proposed solutions to those problems are evaluated on (among many other things) cost to see if the solution is an acceptable one, or if more work is required to find a better solution. But maintaining the status quo is not on the table. The decision has already been made to advance the capability of the organization. The only decision is around how to do it, not whether to do it.

So when a legacy GM style manager asks “What can you do for me?” the question must be changed to “What are you striving to achieve?”

Challenging the complacency of the status quo is our biggest hurdle.

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Recovering the Reasons for 5S

5S has become an (almost) unchallenged starting point for converting to lean production. Although the basics are quite simple, it is often a difficult and challenging process.

After the initial push to sort stuff out and organize what remains, sustaining  often usually almost always becomes an issue.

Again, because of early legacy, the most common response is what I call the 5×5 audit. This is a 5×5 grid, assigning 5 points across each of the “S” categories. It carries an assumption that managers will strive for a high audit score, and thus, work to sustain and even improve the level of organization.

Just today I overheard a manager trying to make the case that an audit score in his area ought to be higher. It was obvious that the objective, at least in the mind of the manager, was the audit score rather than solving problems.

The target condition had become abstract, and 5S had become a “program” with no evident or obvious purpose other than the general goodness that we talk about upon its introduction.

If the audit score is not the most important thing, then why do we emphasize it so much? What is our fascination with assigning points to results vs. looking at the actual results we are striving to achieve?

To digress a bit, many will say at this point that this is an example of too much emphasis on audits. And I agree. But this is more common than not, so I think of this as an instance of a general problem rather than a one-off exception.

Our target condition is a stable process with reduced, more consistent cycle times as less time is spent hunting for things. Though we may see a correlation between 5S audit scores and stability, it is all to easy to focus on the score and forget the reason.

Shop floor people tend to be intelligent and pragmatic types. They do not deal in a world of abstraction. While the correlation might make sense to a manager used to dealing in an abstract world of measurements and financials, that is often not the case where the work is actually done.

The challenge is: How do we make this pragmatic so it makes sense to pragmatic people?

Let’s start by returning the focus to pragmatic problems. Instead of citing general stories where people waste time looking for things so we can present a general solution of 5S, let’s keep the focus on specifics.

What if (as a purely untried hypothetical), we asked a team member to put a simple tick mark //// on a white board when he has to stop and hunt for something, or even dig through a pile to get something he knows is in there? If you multiply that simple exercise times all of the people in the work area, add up the tick marks every day, and then track the trend, you may just get more valuable information than you would with the 5×5 audit done once a month.

What if we actually track stability and cycle times. Isn’t this avoiding these wastes the case we make for 5S in the first place?  So perhaps we should track actual results to see if out understanding is correct, or if it has gaps (which it does, always).

What if we taught area leaders to see instability, off-task motions, and to see those things as problems. Let them understand what workplace dis-organization causes.

How about tracking individual problems solved rather than a general class of blanket countermeasure?

How many sources of work instability did we address today? I’d like to see what you learned in the process. What sources of instability did you uncover as you fixed those? What is your plan to deal with them? Great!

No problems today? OK – let’s watch and see if we missed anything. OH! What happened there? Why did we miss that before? Could we have spotted that problem sooner? What do we need to change so we can see it, and fix it, before it is an issue with the work?

These are all questions that naturally follow a thorough understanding of what 5S actually means.

But we have had 5S freeze dried and vacuum packed for easy distribution and consumption. At some point along the way, we seem to have forgotten its organic state.

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Forcing Compliance or Leader Development?

“Are we trying to force compliance or develop leaders?”

The answer to this question is going to set your direction, and (in my opinion) ultimately your success.

It comes down to your strategy for “change.”

When people talk about “change” they are usually talking about “changing the culture.” Digging down another level, “changing the culture” really means altering the methods, norms and rituals that people (including leaders) use to interact with one another.

In a “traditional” organization, top level leaders seek reports and metrics. Based on those reports and metrics, they ask questions, and issue guidance and direction.

The reports and metrics tend to fall into two categories.

  • Financial metrics that reflect the health of the business.
  • Indicators of “progress” toward some kind of objective or goal – like “are they doing lean?”

Floating that out there, I want to ask a couple of key questions around purpose.

There are two fundamental approaches to “change” within the organization.

You can work to drive compliance; or you can work to develop your leaders.

Both approaches are going to drive changes in behavior.

What are the tools of driving compliance? What assumptions do those tools make about how people are motivated and what they respond to?

What are the tools of leader development? What assumptions do those tools make about how people are motivated and what they respond to?

Which set of tools are you using?

We all say “respect for people.”

Which set of assumptions is respectful?

Just some questions to think about.

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Motivation, Bonuses and Key Performance Indicators

I have posted a few times about the “management by measurement” culture and how destructive it can be. This TED video by Daniel Pink adds some color to the conversation.

Simply put, while traditional “incentives” tend to work well when the task is rote and the solution is well understood, applying those same incentives to situations where creativity is required will reduce people’s performance.

We saw this in Ted Wujec’s Marshmallow Challenge video as well, where an incentive reduced the success rate of the teams to zero.

This time of year companies are typically reviewing their performance and setting goals and targets for next year.

It is important to keep in mind that there is overwhelming evidence that tying bonuses to key performance indicators is the a reliable way to reduce the performance of the company.

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How Do You Deal With Marshmallows?

Yesterday, Kris left great comment with a compelling link to a TED presentation by Tom Wujec, a fellow at Autodesk.

Back in June, I commented on Steve Spear’s article “Why C-Level Executives Don’t Engage in Lean Initiatives.” In that commentary, Spear contends that business leaders are simply not taught the skills and mindset that drives continuous improvement in an organization. They are taught to decide rather than how to experiment and learn. Indeed, they are taught to analyze and minimize risk to arrive at the one best solution.

Tom Wujec observes exactly the same thing. As various groups are trying to build the tallest structure to support their marshmallow, they consistently get different results:

So there are a number of people who have a lot more “uh-oh” moments than others, and among the worst are recent graduates of business school.

[…]

And of course there are teams that have a lot more “ta-da” structures, and, among the best, are recent graduates of kindergarten.[…] And it’s pretty amazing.

[…] not only do they produce the tallest structures,but they’re the most interesting structures of them all.

What is really interesting (to me) are the skills and mindsets that are behind each of these groups’ performance.

First, the architects and engineers. Of course they build the tallest structures. That is their profession. They know how to do this, they have done it many thousands of times in their careers. They have practiced. Their success is not because they are discovering anything, rather, they are applying what they already know.

In your kaizen efforts, if you already know the solution, then just implement it! You are an architect or engineer.

BUT in more cases than we care to admit, we actually do not know the solution. We only know our opinion about what the solution should be. So, eliminating the architects and engineers – the people who already know the solution – we are left with populations of people who do not know the solution to the problem already. This means they can’t just decide and execute, they have to figure out the solution.

But decide and execute is what they are trained to do. So the CEOs and business school graduates take a single iteration. They make a plan, execute it, and fully expect it to work. They actually test the design as the last step, just as the deadline runs out.

The little kids, though, don’t do that.

First, they keep their eye on the target objective from the very beginning.

Think about the difference between these two problem statements:

  • Build the tallest tower you can, and put a marshmallow on top.

and

  • Support the marshmallow as far off the table as you can.

In the first statement, you start with the tower – as the adults do. They are focused on the solution, the countermeasure.

But the kids start with the marshmallow. The objective is to hold the marshmallow off the table. So get it off the table as quick as you can, and try to hold it up there. See the difference?

More importantly, though, is that the kids know they do not know what the answer is. So they try something fast. And fail. And try something else. And fail. Or maybe they don’t fail… then they try something better, moving from a working solution and trying to improve it. And step by step they learn how to design a tower that will solve the problem.

Why? Simply because, at that age, we adults have not yet taught the kids that they are supposed to know, and that they should be ashamed if they do not. Kids learn that later.

Where the adults are focused on finding the right answer, the kids are focused on holding up a marshmallow.

Where the adults are trying to show how smart they are, the kids are working hard to learn something they do not know.

Third – look what happened when Wujac raised the stakes and attached a “big bonus” to winning?

The success rate went to zero. Why? He introduced intramural competition and people were now trying to build the best tower in one try rather than one which simply solved the problem.

Now – in the end, who has advanced their learning the most?

The teams that make one big attempt that either works, or doesn’t work?

Or the team that makes a dozen attempts that work, or don’t work?

When we set up kaizen events, how do we organize them?

One big attempt, or dozens of small ones?

Which one is more conducive to learning? Answer: Which one has more opportunities for failure?

Keep your eye on the marshmallow  – your target objective.

Last thought… If you think you know, you likely don’t. Learning comes from consciously applied ignorance.

Edited 2 August 2016 to fix dead link. Thanks Craig.

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What Failed Today?

Now and then, usually when coaching or teaching someone, I get what I think is a flash of insight. Then I realize that, no, there is nothing new here, it is just a different way to say the same thing. Still, sometimes finding a different way of expressing a concept helps people grasp it, so here is one I jotted down while I was working with a plant.

One of the myths of “lean production” is the idea that, at some point, you achieve stability in all of your processes.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Failure is a normal condition.

The question is not, whether or not you have process breakdowns.

The question is how you respond to them. Actually, a more fundamental question is whether you even recognize “process failure” that doesn’t knock you over. Our reflex is to try to build failure modes that allow things to continue without intervention. In other words, we inject the process with Novocain so we don’t feel the pain. That doesn’t stop us from hitting our thumb with the hammer, it just doesn’t hurt so much.

But think about it a different way.

“What failed today?”

Followed by

“How do we fix that?”

Now you are on the continuous improvement journey. You are using the inevitable process failure as a valuable source of information, because it tells you something you didn’t know.

There is a huge, well established, body of theory in psychology and neuroscience that says that we learn best when three things happen:

  1. We have predicted, or at least visualized, some kind of result.
  2. We try to achieve that result, and are surprised by something unexpected.
  3. We struggle to understand what it is that we didn’t know.

In other words, when we (as humans) are confronted with an unexpected event, we are flooded with an emotional response that we would rather avoid. In simple terms, this translates to “we like to be right.” The easiest way to “be right” is to anticipate nothing.

This takes a lot of forms, usually sounding like excuses that explain why stability is impossible, so why bother trying?

Why indeed? Simple – if you ever want to get out of perpetual chaos, you first have to embrace the idea that you must try, and fail, before you even know what the real issues are.

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British NHS Executive Talks About Lean

Lesley Doherty, the Chief Executive at NHS Bolton in the U.K. was recently interviewed by IQPC as a precursor for her being a keynote speaker at a conference IQPC is sponsoring in December (Zurich). In the spirit of full disclosure, IQPC had invited me to participate in a “blogger’s panel discussion” (along with Karen Wilhelm, author of Lean Reflections) earlier this year in Chicago.

The Chicago conference turned out to be very Six Sigma centric – in spite of having Mike Rother as a keynote. But that is history.

I want to reflect a bit about this podcast. I invite you to listen yourself- it is an interesting perspective from a senior executive who discusses her own learning and discovery. I will warn you that you may have to “register” on the web site – though you can uncheck the “send marketing stuff” box. I will also say that the interview’s sound is pretty bad, so it is hard to hear the questions, but I was able to reconstruct most of it from context.

What is interesting, to me a least, is that the methods and experiences are pretty standard stuff – common to nearly all organization undertaking this kind of transformation.

A summary of the notes I took:

They have to deliver hard budget level savings on the order of 5% a year for the next several years. That is new to them as a government organization.

They started out with an education campaign across the organization.

Initial efforts were on increasing capacity, but those efforts didn’t result in budget savings. In one case, costs actually increased. They don’t need more capacity, they need to deliver the same with less.

They have identified process streams (value streams), and run “rapid improvement events.”

Senior people have been on benchmarking or study trips to other organizations, both within and outside of the health care arena.

They are struggling to sustain the momentum after the few months after an “event” and seeing the “standard” erode a bit – interpreting this as needing to increase accountability and saying “This is how we do things here.”

“Sustaining, getting accountability at the lowest level is the biggest challenge.”

In addition, now that they are under budget pressure, they are starting to look at how to link their improvements to the bottom line, but there isn’t a standardized way to do this.

They believe they are at a “tipping point” now.

There is more, having do to with Ms. Doherty’s personal journey and learning, and knowledge sharing across organizations who are working on the same things, but the key points I want to address are above.

Please don’t think that this interview is as cold as I have depicted it. It is about 20 minutes long, and Ms. Doherty is very open and candid about what is working and what is not. It is not a “rah-rah see what we have done?” session.

As I listened, I was intently trying to parse and pull out a few key points. I would have really liked it if these kinds of questions had been asked.

What is their overall long term vision? Other than meeting budgetary pressure and “radically reviewing” processes, and “transformation.” What is the “true north” or the guide point on the horizon you are steering for?

What is the leadership doing to set focus the improvement effort on the things that are important to the organization? What does the process have to look like to deliver the same level and quality of care at 5% lower costs? What kinds of things are, today, in the way of doing that? Which of those problems are you focused on right now? How is that going? What are you learning?

What did they try that didn’t work, and what did they learn from that experience?

When you say “local accountability” to prevent process erosion, what would that look like? What are you learning about the process when it begins to erode?

The “tipping point” is a great analogy. What behaviors are you looking for to tell you that a fundamental shift is taking place?

As you listen, see if you can parse out what NHS Bolton is actually doing.

Is their approach going to sustain, or are they about to hit the “lean plateau?”

What would the “tipping point” look like to you in this organization?

What advice would you give them, based on what you hear in this interview?

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An Open Letter to John Shook

Congratulations on your assumption of leadership at the Lean Enterprise Institute.

The Lean Enterprise Institute has a deservedly unique place in the community of people working to learn and apply the Toyota Production System. The LEI, and the precursor work at M.I.T., by Jim Womack and others, has been largely responsible for moving the Toyota Production System from the domain of a few consultants into mainstream thought. The term “lean,” for better or worse, is now firmly established all in discussions about business management and production efficiency.

From my perspective, though, the LEI is at a crossroads. While what I am offering here is my opinion alone, this platform has given me great opportunities to connect with people across the spectrum of the “lean community.” This is only my opinion, but it was not formed in isolation.

Background

In the early days, the LEI – and Jim Womack especially – took on an almost evangelical role. The initial workbooks – Learning to See, Creating Continuous Flow, Creating Level Pull, Making Materials Flow, had the effect of creating a near canonical definition of “lean.” We could (and did) debate it, but it was pretty clear what the LEI meant by the word.

The message of those early workbooks, carried forward from Lean Thinking, was clear: “We are still learning this, and sharing it with you as we go.”

Perception

Today, however, out here in the world of steel-toe shoes, safety glasses (and yes, scrubs and surgical masks), the LEI has developed a reputation for being insular – not particularly open to the idea that people outside of the LEI’s inner circle might have gained deeper knowledge that moves beyond the message of 1999-2001.

In addition, the LEI seems to have drifted from being a standard bearer with a crisp message to becoming a specialty publisher, much like the Productivity Press of the late 1990’s.

If the role of being a specialty publisher is what the LEI is striving to become, then that is great. But it is nothing special and, over time, I feel the brand will dilute and the LEI’s name on a book will mean little more than McMillan, Wiley or Free Press. Even today, I (and others) no longer assume that just because the LEI is publishing a book that it is automatically worth reading or using as a reference.

But the biggest tragedy is lost opportunity to lead.

Today, even though the founders coined and popularized the term, the Lean Enterprise Institute no longer represents the final word of what “lean” means. Nobody does.

Is “lean” a synonym for the Toyota Production System or Toyota’s management system? With all of the reference to Toyota, I would think that is the intent. But there are many well qualified experts out there who make a good case that the LEI’s publications and message are, at best, a subset of TPS. Others argue that “lean” and TPS are fundamentally different in some way.

The result is that “lean” means whatever someone with an opinion says it does.

The LEI has chosen not to engage in this debate. That is well and fine, but at the same time the message emerging from Cambridge is increasingly unfocused – as the shift (drift?) is made from “standard bearer” to “publisher and promoter.”

Therefore, I believe that in the eyes of the world, the LEI no longer owns “lean” and chooses (by action and inaction) to not define it.

Other organizations, such as the AME and SME, are claiming to hold canonical definitions as they work to establish formal “certification” programs to compete with the ASQ’s ownership of “Black Belt.” (I often wonder if Taiichi Ohno would have been able to get a “lean certification” by the standards offered by these organizations.)

The original academic discipline of continuously developing, testing, pushing, revising the current understanding – the very foundations of the LEI out of M.I.T.-  seems to have frozen in place – as though the initial research that led to the LEI’s formation is regarded as the end-all.

Challenge

So I have some questions.

One of the central tenants of “The Toyota Way” is challenge.

What is the challenge for the LEI? What is that ideal state that the LEI is striving to become?

Is it to be a successful publisher and promoter of books? Or is there still a sense of a higher purpose?

If it is the later, then I would like to suggest that this higher purpose is not felt “out here” in the world.

I, for one, would like to see the LEI return to a position of being the baseline authority. But this means giving up the idea that there is a static understanding which has already been grasped and simply needs to be put into practice. There is simply too much new knowledge being gained for that position to hold.

Ironically, the Toyota management system itself is built on foundation of striving to learn what is not yet understood. It would be appropriate for the LEI to embrace the same thinking. Just as “no problem is a big problem,” I would argue that “We already know” means “we have stopped learning.”

Ideas

So what would that look like?

Define “Lean” in non-abstract terms.

To regain leadership, the first step would be to describe the target of “lean” as a testable (and refutable) model. When we say “Lean,” it should define what are we striving for.

What does it look like when the organization is truly engaged in continuous improvement? This isn’t about describing tools, or results, but rather the key elements of a system and how they interact with one another – including the process of management and leadership.

What if we put John Shook, Mike Rother, Steve Spear, Jeff Liker, Michael Ballé, Art Smalley in a room – real or virtual – with a skilled facilitator and a task to try and isolate the five or six key operational elements that are in place in an organization that is truly “getting it.” Each of these people brings a significant piece of the puzzle. Could they fit them together?

The idea would be to develop a solid, testable, working theory of what “Lean” means as a general-case model of the Toyota Production Management System. This would be the LEI’s official position. Sure, others have their views, but this is ours, and this is how we are testing it. Put a stake in the ground, then be willing to continuously test it, review it, and update it.

I certainly have my own ideas on what those key elements are are, but would  love to facilitate that conversation and see the results.  🙂

Let’s acknowledge that we learn about TPS by continuous application of the scientific method – research, developing and testing hypotheses, and this is not static knowledge. We have nothing but our best current understanding, and as we apply it, we learn what we do not know. True senseis are those who have mastered, and teach, the process of learning.

Define a process.

Having a theoretical base is not enough. For it to be practical, we also must learn how to put it into practice. We are dealing with two separate things here.

One is the working theory of how TPS works as a management system.

The other is the approach used to deploy that process into an organization that has a long history of not doing it. In this, we must move outside of Toyota’s world and into the very messy world where the people who are practicing these things are isolated from one another, and have little or no coaching or even emotional support.

This means developing another theoretical base – one for deployment.

Lean Thinking outlined a sort-of process with five steps, but I contend those simply describe a sequence of tool deployment and do not address a management system. In those five steps “Pursue perfection” is a core tenant, but has never been well described – at least not until the publication of Toyota Kata. It is time to reflect on the last 15 years, review the approach, and incorporate what has been learned since.

Further, enough companies have tried the sequential-tools-implementation approach over the last couple of decades, that we have a pretty good idea that it doesn’t work very well. But have we truly examined why, beyond the platitudes of blaming “insufficient management commitment?”

Learning to See actually started this process. It outlined a pretty good process for gaining “current condition” understanding. I would certainly be comfortable in saying that if this process does not work to that end, it is more because of flawed application than a flawed process. But subsequent workbooks started down the path of describing the mechanics in ways that largely left out the people and the leadership processes.

So let’s return to the original concept of setting out a path for learning.

Then continuously test

Now comes the tough part. There must be an acknowledgement that, as much as this process captures what we have learned, it is likely imperfect. But we do not know where or how the flaws will show up. They will only become apparent in practice and application.

The only way to widely and continuously test a theoretical base for deployment is to fully engage a population of practitioners. These are the people who are taking the TPS theory and applying it to uncontrolled environments “in the wild” – the actual factories, hospitals, service providers out there.

To be a TPS-based process, the deployment process itself has to have mechanisms for built-in checks, both in application (are we doing it right, if not what is stopping us?) and outcomes (did it work, if not, what actually happened?).

The community of practitioners are going to be the ones on the virtual assembly line, with one hand on the andon cord. How quickly can the community be engaged to respond to issues, swarm the problem, restore to the standard, and then seek to understand what was not previously understood?

What I do know is that the LEI has one of the most active technical discussion forums out there. A webinar attracts thousands of listeners. An email with a link generates a huge spike in hits to the target site. How can that network be organized, focused and harnessed?

I don’t actually know. But if the LEI were to assume a position of leadership and establish a good vision and progressive target conditions to develop the community of practitioners into a team, I am willing to wager that the kaizen process, if properly applied, would work for that as well.

Paradigm shift

This is much more than organizing conferences, webinars, and publishing books written by consultants. Truthfully, anybody can do that, and frankly, there are more than a few who do those things better than the LEI does.

But the fleeting opportunity is one to regain a position of leadership, and truly engage people in ways no one has ever done. But isn’t that the core challenge of the Toyota approach in the first place?

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Trusting the Process

Here is an “ah-ha” or even one of those “oh s#!&” moments I had as Mike Rother was talking about his Toyota Kata research last week.

  Solution How Solution is Developed
Toyota / “Lean” Left Open Very specific – guided and directed.
Traditional Management Given / Directed Not specified, left to “empowered” employee.

When confronted with a problem, “traditional” managers have been taught to direct a solution, and leave details of putting it into place unspecified – “empowering” people to find the best way to work the details, solve the problems, and get it done.

“Toyota” or “Lean” managers, on the other hand, (if they are following the kata model – rare outside of Toyota I think), are going to be quite open about the solution, but very specific about the method used to develop and deploy that solution.

The result?

The two populations learn quite different things.

One learns to bypass obstacles, put the directed solution into place quickly.. git-r-done.

The other learns, through repetition, a thorough, adaptable, reliable and universal process for diagnosing a situation, seeing the root cause, and developing countermeasures that sustain.

The line I circled in my notes is “Kata must be content free.” meaning that if the method is carried out correctly, the solution will work to deal with the issue at hand. It is not necessary to specify a solution, only to hold the “true north” of what constitutes improvement and ensure that the process to develop the solution is carried out correctly.

An unworkable solution is a sign that the problem solving process was not applied correctly, not a flaw in the process itself.

OK – that all sounds good. What is the “ah-ha?”

How have many of us been “implementing lean” and “engaging people” by giving them targets in the form of specific tools to implement, and then leaving it to the “engaged team” to work out the details of how it will function in their situation? Which of the above two models am I using if I do that?

If I were to set an appropriate target, that takes the process closer to one-by-one, etc. and then to correctly guide the team through the process of understanding the current state, evaluating what problem(s) are blocking progress in that position, and methodically solve them they might or might not arrive at the tool I have in mind as the answer. Just to be clear – this approach is a lot tougher because there is another skill involved than just knowing how to make kanban work, or set up a u-shaped work cell.

There is a fine line as well between giving the team the solution and advising them on some things to try that will help them reveal more issues.

But in the end, if their solution works to close the gap, but uses a totally different approach, I have to be open to that possibility.

We lean “experts” have to play by our own rulebook.

Otherwise I am simply holding a wrench and looking for a screw to pound.

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Automating the Coaching Questions

Hopefully that title got some attention.

In Toyota Kata, Mike Rother frames a PDCA coaching process around five questions.

The first three questions are:

  1. What is the target condition?
  2. What is the current condition?
  3. What problems or obstacles are preventing you from reaching the target?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could build a machine that asked and answered those questions for us?

Of course automated processes do not improve themselves (yet). But they can be made to compare current operation against a standard.

When Sakichi Toyoda was working on automated weaving looms, he was actually striving to reduce the need to have an operator overseeing each and every machine. That was the point of automating the equipment. One of the problems he encountered was that threads break. When that happened, the machine would continue to run, producing defective material.

So in order to reach his goal, he needed to replace the need for a human operator to be asking these questions and give that ability to the process itself.

What is the target condition?

The loom continues to run and produces defect free material. For this to occur, the threads must remain intact.

What is the current condition?

The threads are either intact, or they are broken.

But if the machine cannot continuously ask, and answer, that second question then a human must do it. Otherwise, nobody gets to the third question, “What is stopping us?” unless they happen to notice the machine is smoothly producing defective material.

Since his goal was to reduce the need for human oversight, he had to solve this problem.

Toyoda’s (now classic, and still used) response was to put thin metal floaters on each thread. If a thread broke, the floater dropped, triggering an automatic machine shutdown.

The machine was now asking the second coaching question with each and every cycle, comparing the actual situation with the target situation.

The event of the machine shutting down triggered the attention of a human operator with the answer to the third question.

What problem or obstacle is preventing you from reaching the target?

Right now, there is a broken thread. I cannot produce defect-free material until this situation is corrected. Please assist me.

The process was named jidoka and in that moment, the foundation for what grew into the Toyota Production System was set.

Without reliable and consistent production, one-by-one flow and just-in-time are impossible. The options are to either work on the problem, or stop improving.

It is the leader’s responsibility to ensure that there are processes in place to do these things. Sitting still is not an option, there is nothing in these techniques that is a secret. Your competitors are doing it. It is only a matter of who can solve problems faster and better.