Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Toyota Way

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 227 posts

Re: The Toyota Way

#141

Post by [deleted] »

artsyca wrote: post #137
Jtsummers wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those companies known for their speed and quality of code delivery? Have they published studies and popularised their approaches? Have they, or anyone else, generalized their approaches to things other than specific software categories? The thing about the manufacturing processes that have come out of Toyota (and others), or the ideas from Deming, Goldratt, and others, is that they're more about general systems t…

Nintendo releases more software than Toyota

[deleted]

Re: The Toyota Way

#142

Post by elemeno »

mnctvanj wrote: post #43
wil421 wrote: post #26

>Principle 5 Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time. Quality takes precedence (Jidoka). Any employee in the Toyota Production System has the authority to stop the process to signal a quality issue. I heard culturally Japan and to an extent other Asian manufacturing nations would never actually press the button. Can anyone confirm this?

If you can get your hands on the HBS case study of TPS it's a great read. Details how much emphasis is put on blaming any/all issues on process, rather than people. To the extent that if a clumsy worker drops a wrench, it is assumed to be a problem with process, not that worker, and addressed immediately. The case study also describes a couple of examples of assembly line workers pulling the stop levers and how manag…

Do you have a title or a link to the case study - just searching for TPS on HBR returns an awful lot of results!

Re: The Toyota Way

#143

Post by parliament32 »

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…

>I had the brake fully depressed with around 100kg of force, and the engine was revving to attempt to overcome the brake

No, it wasn't. An engine's speed (RPM / "revs") is directly proportional to the drivetrain speed -- the RPMs literally cannot increase unless you are 1) accelerating (actual drivetrain speed going up), 2) shift to a lower gear then slip torque converter to rev match (I assume you're driving automatic), or 3) disengaged from the drivetrain (in neutral gear) and hitting the gas.

There's no way for an engine to be "revving" to overcome braking. Hop in a manual car, get up to a normal speed in any gear, then try hitting both the brake and gas.

Re: The Toyota Way

#144

Post by marcosdumay »

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.

Just because you can, it does not mean that you should.

Toyota cars are very successful, I don't know how do they react to a market change because AFAIK, they recently didn't have to.

Re: The Toyota Way

#145

Post by gburdell3 »

novaleaf wrote: post #128
maimeowmeow wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

That's not how it works. The brakes are more powerful than the engine, sure, but only at full braking power. Ask anyone who owns a rear-wheel-drive sports car what happens when you push both pedals at the same time and they will literally leave you in a cloud of smoke.

Re: The Toyota Way

#146

Post by ihattendorf »

gavia1 wrote: post #133
novaleaf wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

If this were true people wouldn't be able to do burnouts in auto transmissions cars?

It's actually fairly common, try searching for "brake override".

Re: The Toyota Way

#147

Post by vram22 »

vvanders wrote: post #138
vram22 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have some links for the history? I'm interested in Lean and Kaizen. Made a comment about it in this thread.

It's covered a little in the TAL episode on NUMMI[1]. There's also a bit of it involved with TWI[2][3]. I'd read some other interesting things about skill transfer post-WW2 with the Marshall Plan but having trouble finding the original source material. [1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/403/nummi-2010 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Training_Within_Industry#Post_... [3] https://twi-institute.org/training-within-i…

Great, will check those links out, thank you.

Re: The Toyota Way

#148

Post by tastygreenapple »

pixelbash wrote: post #134
smush wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand corrected. Having performed some cursory 'research' I found that in the USA in 2018, according to https://www.best-selling-cars.com/brands/2018-full-year-usa-... All Lexus vehicles combined sold 92,660 units versus the 4Runner model which sold 139,694 units. A difference of 47,000 units, or roughly, the 2018 US sales for the Lexus ES

At a guess the USA is not the primary market for Lexus.

America is 100% the primary market for Lexus.

The first Lexus car ever was unveiled in the 1989 Detroit Auto Show, Toyota's first non-Japanese Lexus plant was in North America. In fact, Toyota stopped selling top-of-the-line cars after Lexus launched, they discontinued the Cressida and stretched the Camry into the Avalon just to have a full-sized Toyota in America.

Toyota didn't even sell Lexus cars in Japan until ~2006, the American Lexus vehicles were badged as Toyotas (e.g The LS400/LS430 was the 'Celsior'). Additionally, Japanese luxury tastes are different than American tastes - the Japanese Toyota Celsiors were available with a premium cloth interior and without sunroofs (which came standard on many American Lexus cars).

Now, Lexus may sell more in the Middle East than North America (by revenue if not units) but America was 100% the target market.

Re: The Toyota Way

#150

Post by novaleaf »

parliament32 wrote: post #143
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…

>I had the brake fully depressed with around 100kg of force, and the engine was revving to attempt to overcome the brake No, it wasn't. An engine's speed (RPM / "revs") is directly proportional to the drivetrain speed -- the RPMs literally cannot increase unless you are 1) accelerating (actual drivetrain speed going up), 2) shift to a lower gear then slip torque converter to rev match (I assume you're driving automat…

I'm not a car guy, so maybe I am getting some technical terminology wrong.

But Toyota's software did cause acceleration even without pushing the accelerator, and even while pressing the brake. They were legally proven to be at fault for that.

You can speculate all you want if I was being an idiot and mis-remembering what I personally did, but these facts still stand regardless of my personal experience:

1) Toyota was legally at fault for software caused unintended acceleration in the USA

2) Toyota Thailand never issued a recall for similar makes/years

Now maybe the software of cars sold in Thailand is totally different from the software of cars sold in the USA, but the cynic in me thinks it's just that Thailand's lack of consumer protections, plus Toyota's indifference, is the real reason no action was taken.

Post reply on HN