Did Ohno Miss Something?

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“The basis of the Toyota production system is the absolute elimination of waste.” – Taiichi Ohno

Every now and then, I like to go back and reread books I’ve read in the past to be reminded of important points that I’ve either forgotten or just missed the first time around.  This is particularly true of books by, or related to W. Edwards Deming, Peter Drucker, and Taiichi Ohno.  Recently, I reread Ohno’s The Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production.  Each time I read this book, I get a better understanding of the thinking behind the development of TPS, including how I can address a number of organizational problems I face that I’ve been unable to resolve.

This time around, though, there was one point that kept coming up and I couldn’t get past.  Throughout the book, Ohno repeats the idea the TPS is completely about eliminating waste.  The issue I had with this is that, in my experience, people who focus lean efforts only on waste tend to get overly focused on the tools and end up working a number of disconnected problems that result in little sustained improvement.

A more subtle message in the book that I don’t believe gets as much attention as the elimination of waste is the challenge that Kiichiro Toyoda put forth regarding the need to “catch up with America in three years.”  Ohno writes very fondly about Toyoda, including how important he was to Japanese industry and the development of TPS.  He credits Toyoda’s statement as being inspirational, but rather than being the drive for the development of TPS, translates it into a call for the elimination of waste.

So Much More than Waste

Perhaps Ohno’s view of waste is more complex than most people can truly comprehend, but I think that the message of using lean to reduce waste has gotten so watered down that most companies fail to achieve the big gains that a true transformation can achieve.

When the focus is waste reduction, lean can easily become a toolbox to reduce costs.  In my experience, every organization that turns its lean effort toward cost reduction fails to sustain the improvements and eventually drops the effort when something else draws its attention.

I contend that the focus of lean should be the company’s vision.  This assumes that the organization has a vision and that it’s truly inspirational.  In Toyota’s case, the vision was to catch up with America.  Other companies that have been successful with lean tend to have equally inspirational vision statements.

Deming said that a company’s vision is a value judgement and must include plans for the future.  This means that it includes much more than profits or share price.  It must relate to providing better and better value to the company’s stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers, the community, and shareholders.  It is the focus on improving the value to all stakeholders to a level never before achieved (or even conceived) that provides inspiration. 

When the organization has a clear statement that inspires people, lean becomes the vehicle to make it happen.  It provides a method for everyone in the organization to align efforts and work together to drive sustained and never-ending improvement.  The effort begins with the vision and translates it into more and more detail as it works through the company’s long-term objectives, annual plans, dashboards, meeting rhythm, and daily problem-solving. 

It is through the alignment of these efforts, beginning with a clear and inspirational vision, that lean enables innovation and an obsessive focus on closing the gaps that are truly important to the organization.  And when lean efforts are anchored by the vision, people will not be distracted by the numerous management fads that can derail the effort.

What Did Ohno Mean?

We’ll never get inside of Ohno’s head to understand whether or not the vision of catching up to America in three years is what truly inspired the development of TPS.  It is only my interpretation that the vision is what leads to sustained gains and what drives lean at Toyota.  Perhaps I’ll see this more clearly the next time I read the book . . . or perhaps I’ll find something else I completely missed this time.

The Many Benefits of Standardized Work

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“Where there is no standard, there can be no kaizen.” – Taiichi Ohno

The above quote by Taiichi Ohno is used frequently to emphasize the importance of standardized work.  It’s one of those statements, though, that is so simple that I believe many people miss the true depth and significance of standardized work to an organization’s success.

Without a clear understanding of why standardized work is so important and how it drives improvement, it can be easy to miss out on many of the benefits that an effective system.

Among the benefits of integrating standardized work into the operation include:

Consistency/Stabilization  The chances of achieving stability in a process are very small without standardized work.  Clear and simple instructions help people do the work in a consistent way.  Without a standard, people are free to do the work as they see fit.

Identification of Problems  A standard defines how a process should operate every time.  Therefore, whenever the process does not follow the standard (e.g., defect, too much time, cost overrun, etc.), a problem has occurred that needs to be addressed.  Identifying a problem as a departure from standard – or expectations – makes it much more objective and easy for people to do.

Investigation of Problems When a problem occurs, the first place to look is the standard.  Did the people involved follow the standard?  If not, why not?  If so, then where did the standardized work breakdown?  How are we going to improve the standard to assure this problem will not recur?

Sustaining Improvements This is what most people think about when they read the Ohno quote.  There is no way to assure that team members will follow the improvements because there is no standard that people are expected to follow to perform the work.

Free Up Brainpower  Many people fear that standardized work attempts to turn them into robots but, in reality, the exact opposite is true.  One of the objectives of standardized work and associated training is to develop the ability to perform repetitive tasks subconsciously so brainpower can be free to focus on problem-solving.

Team Learning Incorporating improvements into standardized work assures that learning and associated improvements remain with the team rather than with individuals.  As people move in and out of the team, the improvements made over the years stays with the team.

I can only guess what Taiichi Ohno meant when he made the above statement.  The more I learn about lean, however, the more I understand the significance and depth of such a simple statement. 

Standardized Work: Avoiding the Complexity Trap

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“No matter how great the principles behind a manual are, it has no value if it cannot be applied in practice.” – Taiichi Ohno*

One of the most critical but challenging elements of an organization’s lean transformation effort is the adoption of standardized work.  Often underestimated by those just learning lean, the benefits of standardized work include among others, reducing process and product variability, providing a starting point for investigating problems, helping people identify when a problem is about to occur, and enabling improvements to be sustained. 

Within the oil and gas industry, it is common to face resistance from people recounting images of one of the major players known for creating large, overly complicated instructions that strangle innovation and, in reality, cannot be fully followed - and oil and gas is unfortunately not the only industry where this happens.  There are companies in virtually every industry that complicate documentation to the point of ineffectiveness and crushing the creativity of team workers.  Documents in these companies tend to be long, complex, and rarely change, and as a result, create a false sense of security that the standards are helping achieve consistent, predictable, and inherently safe performance throughout the operation.

How Much is Too Much?

So what is the difference between a lean thinking approach to standard work and one where the documentation is ineffective and stifling?  Both approach standardization with the objective of reducing variation in the way work is done.  Both use standards to assure the most important aspects of the process are followed and work is done safely and with a high level of quality.

To prevent heading down the wrong path when rolling out standardized work, it is important to understand the key differences between the two approaches and what it is that makes one more effective than the other.

Guided by Scientific Method

Although there are numerous differences between a lean and traditional approach to standardization, the most glaring is that work in lean thinking organizations is guided by scientific method or a PDSA (plan-do-study-act) mindset, while traditional organizations are not.  Although a seemingly simple difference, the effect on standardization, as well as other aspects of the business, can be dramatic.

In both types of organizations, standardized work is the best current practice known at the time it was developed and is expected to be followed as written.  Organizations guided by PDSA thinking, however, consciously accept the notion that following the practice to consistently producing safe, efficient, and high quality work is a hypothesis - and people are always looking for the hypothesis to fail.  Whenever a defect, delay, or incident occurs, it is understood that the hypothesis has failed and that a quick adjustment - or improvement - is necessary to prevent a similar failure from occurring in the future.  The resulting change to the process becomes a new hypothesis that it will operate as expected and, when it fails, will drive further action.

Traditional organizations do not approach standards in this manner because it is not normal behavior for people to be looking for something they created to fail.  A significant amount of time would be spent creating the perfect document that includes enough detail to accurately describe the prescribed process.  When the instruction is released, the work would be considered "done" and the person would move on to his or her next project.  The document would only be revised when a big problem occurs that identifies a glaring weakness needing attention.  And since people are not specifically looking for the practice to fail, the small issues would be ignored.  As a result, continual improvement of the process does not occur and variability between operators in the way work is actually done grows.

A Shift in Thinking

Keeping instructions short, visual, and easy-to-follow requires more than just telling people to do so.  It requires a far more significant shift in thinking than many people realize or are ready to accept.  When standardized work is approached standardized work as part of a continual experiment toward creating the perfect process, it will become seen as far more than just a way to convey information.  It will become seen as the anchor to learning and effective problem-solving, and a critical element to the company’s overall success.

Copyright © 2014 Gregg Stocker

* From The Toyota Mindset: The Ten Commandments of Taiichi Ohno by Yoshihito Wakamatsu (Enna Products Limited, Bellingham, WA, 2009)