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The Toyota Way

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Re: The Toyota Way

#121

Post by samirm »

nradov wrote: post #73
lemax wrote: post #53

"The Machine That Changed the World" is a wonderful title on this. Kiichiro Toyoda invented the lean production model after coming to the states and studying the inefficiencies of the assembly lines of Ford. This was a process dependent on modularizing every manufacturing component due to a demand for the Toyota company to serve a market with a need for an immense variety of vehicles, and giving teams ownership of th…

Ironically Toyota now has longer product lives than many other mainstream manufacturers. The Camry and Corolla are on roughly 6 year product lifecycles. The 4Runner has barely changed in 10 years.

why is that ironic?

Re: The Toyota Way

#122

Post by Jtsummers »

kaycebasques wrote: post #119

They list “motion” as a form of waste. What does this mean?

In manufacturing its unneeded movement. If I have to get a part that’s at the other side of the facility or even 30’ away, that’s a lot of effort in roundtrips. The component or part should be brought to me. Or my work should be brought to the component or part.

Or the movement could be made useful by having me (or the movement mechanism) carry something both ways.

Re: The Toyota Way

#123

Post by bluedino »

kaycebasques wrote: post #119

They list “motion” as a form of waste. What does this mean?

Copy/paste: Unnecessary movement of people in the plant or in the general work area, such as looking for parts and tools, leaving the work area for any reason, and physically moving products and parts. Motion is probably the second most common waste.

Re: The Toyota Way

#124

Post by btilly »

jacobush wrote: post #110
novaleaf wrote: post #102

Whenever I see articles like this, I like to remind people that a great production system doesn't make a company more honest or accountable. Unintended acceleration flaw in Toyota models around 2005 to 2011, due to firmware bugs: http://www.safetyresearch.net/blog/articles/toyota-unintende... Great for USA customers. They were made whole. I personally was driving a 2011 Toyota minivan in Thailand in 2013 when I suffe…

Weirdest thing, a colleague had unintended acceleration in a Toyota 4WD of much older vintage, 80s or early 90s. Must have been something different entirely, those things were much more mechanical in nature.

Most cases of unintended acceleration, in all brands of cars, are due to the foot coming down on the wrong pedal. And then in a panic, your brain refuses to acknowledge the error and doubles down. Your memory gets based on what your brain thought, and not what actually happened.

US government estimates are that this happens an average of around 16k times per year in the USA. The press release that Wikipedia cites for that has disappeared but you can find it on the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20180423205652/https://www.nhtsa...

Toyota's acknowledged problem was a floor mat that could get jammed and cause the accelerator to stick. However most of their cases of unintended acceleration were still likely to be human error.

Re: The Toyota Way

#125

Post by novaleaf »

btilly wrote: post #124
jacobush wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weirdest thing, a colleague had unintended acceleration in a Toyota 4WD of much older vintage, 80s or early 90s. Must have been something different entirely, those things were much more mechanical in nature.

Most cases of unintended acceleration, in all brands of cars, are due to the foot coming down on the wrong pedal. And then in a panic, your brain refuses to acknowledge the error and doubles down. Your memory gets based on what your brain thought, and not what actually happened. US government estimates are that this happens an average of around 16k times per year in the USA. The press release that Wikipedia cites for…

I'm sorry but you are wrong regarding the Toyota problem.

There was (is?) a firmware issue that caused the vehicle to attempt to speed up, regardless of if the accelerator was pressed, or even if the brake was pressed.

In my case, I had the brake fully depressed with around 100kg of force, and the engine was revving to attempt to overcome the brake (VERY scary situation, believe me!). The system only recovered when I bumped a taxi in front of me.

Now you may say I was pushing the accelerator. If I did that I would have hit the car in front of me a lot faster than 5kph. If I was somehow pushing both the accelerator and the brake, the computer system should ignore the acceleration anyway (due to brake taking precedence).

But you don't have to take my word for it. Go read up on the Toyota firmware issue, starting with link I put in the prior post.

EDIT: here's another article, summarizing the faults as determined by court: https://www.edn.com/design/automotive/4423428/Toyota-s-kille...

- Toyota’s electronic throttle control system (ETCS) source code is of unreasonable quality.

- Toyota’s source code is defective and contains bugs, including bugs that can cause unintended acceleration (UA).

- Code-quality metrics predict presence of additional bugs.

- Toyota’s fail safes are defective and inadequate (referring to them as a “house of cards” safety architecture).

- Misbehaviors of Toyota’s ETCS are a cause of UA.

Re: The Toyota Way

#126

Post by hinkley »

throw0101a wrote: post #95
lemax wrote: post #53

"The Machine That Changed the World" is a wonderful title on this. Kiichiro Toyoda invented the lean production model after coming to the states and studying the inefficiencies of the assembly lines of Ford. This was a process dependent on modularizing every manufacturing component due to a demand for the Toyota company to serve a market with a need for an immense variety of vehicles, and giving teams ownership of th…

> Kiichiro Toyoda invented the lean production model after coming to the states and studying the inefficiencies of the assembly lines of Ford. See also Deming on quality control: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Work_in_Japa...

As I’ve heard it, Deming was having trouble getting people to listen to him on this side of the pond, but the Japanese were all too happy to listen to his ideas.

There also seems to be a running disagreement about whether Mr Toyoda or Taiichi Ohno is responsible for the Toyota system.

To wit, the intro to Ohno’s Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiichi_Ohno

Re: The Toyota Way

#127

Post by maimeowmeow »

novaleaf wrote: post #125
btilly wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most cases of unintended acceleration, in all brands of cars, are due to the foot coming down on the wrong pedal. And then in a panic, your brain refuses to acknowledge the error and doubles down. Your memory gets based on what your brain thought, and not what actually happened. US government estimates are that this happens an average of around 16k times per year in the USA. The press release that Wikipedia cites for…

I'm sorry but you are wrong regarding the Toyota problem. There was (is?) a firmware issue that caused the vehicle to attempt to speed up, regardless of if the accelerator was pressed, or even if the brake was pressed. In my case, I had the brake fully depressed with around 100kg of force, and the engine was revving to attempt to overcome the brake (VERY scary situation, believe me!). The system only recovered when I…

maybe you were pressing both

Re: The Toyota Way

#128

Post by novaleaf »

maimeowmeow wrote: post #127
novaleaf wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but you are wrong regarding the Toyota problem. There was (is?) a firmware issue that caused the vehicle to attempt to speed up, regardless of if the accelerator was pressed, or even if the brake was pressed. In my case, I had the brake fully depressed with around 100kg of force, and the engine was revving to attempt to overcome the brake (VERY scary situation, believe me!). The system only recovered when I…

maybe you were pressing both

From what I understand, the computer will (and should) reject the acceleration attempt in favor of the brake.

But, if you own a reasonably modern vehicle, try it :)

Re: The Toyota Way

#129

Post by fblp »

Curious would anyone like to learn about Toyota production system (lean manufacturing) implementation at Zenbooth factory in Berkeley, CA? We've thought about doing tours.

Re: The Toyota Way

#130

Post by mbubb »

Jtsummers wrote: post #55
richman777 wrote: post #51

A lot of this was covered in "The Phoenix Project". A good read but a bit idealistic in the expected outcome. The fake company was essentially able to right the sinking ship after the band had already stopped playing, in 2 quarters no less. However, the core tenets were valid from a general approach. My fear when reading was the potential to go overboard. We have all met over-zealous scrum masters. Same could be appl…

It's worth reading The Goal as The Phoenix Project is somewhat based on it. The Goal introduces the idea of Theory of Constraints in a similar novelized form, and The Phoenix Project takes ToC and applies it to information systems/software work. There's overlap between ToC and the Toyota Way (Toyota Production System, Lean, etc.) as all are based on taking a systems view of things, and place a great deal of emphasis…

I had a CTO loan me "The Goal" after I came back from USENIX in Boston (2011) talking about devops and shite... Its a good read and gave context to the Phoenix project without being a spoiler...
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