Genba @ Toyota Materials Solutions

I had the opportunity to be with the team from Toyota Materials Solutions last week. I always learn something new when I connect with them.

These are a couple of things that I learned this week:

Often when we write standard work, we call it “the best known current way of performing the task”. The team at Toyota called it “the least worst knownway to perform a task”. 

 Sound petty? It did to me too at first, but when I pushed in and began to learn about this, Toyota sees waste as an enemy to be destroyed. The first phrase is very positive, with the second depicting a negative perception of waste into the culture, continually striving for a better way.

The other thing that I was able to observe more clearly this time was the absence of variation. 

When I was speaking with the work director, he kept telling me that the line was running at 95% utilization, which was staggering, because people were working calmly, and taking breaks as needed.

As he spoke and I observed, I began to recall the Kingman formula, a formula that I had to learn from my early days as a system design engineer. Impressive to say the least.

When we see these things, and are reminded of what is possible, we can become inspired, or discouraged. What we focus on matters.

 This is how I coach my teams: what I the next thing that you would like to accomplish, what is the next thing that you could do to move in that direction and how quickly can you begin?

Small habits make big differences.

Shigeo Shingo tells us that our likelihood to follow a task is based on the difficulty of the task, multiplied by the frequency. This means that even if we aren’t good at something that is difficult, we will become more comfortable with it, by doing it more. Likewise, if we aren’t comfortable with bad practices, these habits become difficult to change.

My ask today is this: What things are you wanting to change, what is the next thing you will do about it, and how soon can you do those things?

 Let’s make tomorrow better than today.