Isn't this based on a "philosophy" published by Bell Labs a couple of decades prior?
The Toyota Way
41–50 of 227 posts
Re: The Toyota Way
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for sharing! Good read
Thanks for reading! I think Deming is extremely under-appreciated. It seems like Six Sigma is all anyone talks about in terms of management philosophy these days...
Deming's work has been highly influential within the DevOps community:
Re: The Toyota Way
#43>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 management runs over asap (every minute of stoppage is much money lost) to ask the question "why" five times in order to understand the root issue of the process breakdown.
Re: The Toyota Way
#44How do you maintain "Principle 1" while being a publicly traded company? The way the stock market is designed (and the fact that stockholders often get to appoint the board who gets to appoint the CEO) means they're going to put short term profits over long term viability. Many companies have been ruined and continue to be ruined by this short-term-ism chase for quarterly and yearly profits. For example look at the f…
>The way the stock market is designed (and the fact that stockholders often get to appoint the board who gets to appoint the CEO) means they're going to put short term profits over long term viability. Many companies have been ruined and continue to be ruined by this short-term-ism chase for quarterly and yearly profits.
Short term stock prices aren't entirely controlled by short term results. Just look at PE ratios for growth companies. Short term results often change the price a lot because its an indicator for future results. Stuff like one time write offs don't really affect the price.
Re: The Toyota Way
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Many companies have been ruined and continue to be ruined You say "ruined", I say "fulfilled their ultimate purpose as disposable wealth-extraction machines enriching executives". I totally agree that the stock market's design encourages short-termism. But this is entirely appropriate in service of the idea that heroic individuals are chiefly responsible for company outcomes.
Though of course in traditional theory the company should be run for the shareholders rather than the executives. It's a bit of a flaw in the system if they can extract large bonuses while tanking the stock. Maybe the government could write some laws that bonuses have to be held in escrow for a while to check the company survives. (And in more modern views maybe you should worry about the other stakeholders too.)
Active shareholders are happy to see their stock value rise to unsustainable levels and then selling them to the next suckers.
Passive shareholders, well, don't participate on decision making.
Expect this feature to get worse with increased share of index funds. But not by much, because most people never were active anyway.
Re: The Toyota Way
#46I enjoyed this fiction book that covers a story of a business professional learning the Toyota business system from a mentor. It's a quick worthwhile read. Non-affiliate Amazon link here: https://www.amazon.com/Andy-Me-Crisis-Transformation-Journey...
Re: The Toyota Way
#47I initially misread that as "The Toyota War". Which was a real thing, named that because Chad used Toyota Land Cruisers to defeat Libya. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War
The entire decades-long overseas diversion saga surrounding American Toyota pickups has always fascinated me.
Top Gear did an episode [0] trying to destroy a Toyota Hilux (similar to the Land Cruiser) and literally couldn't, which explains why it's so popular with terrorists. It's a worthwhile watch if you want to see truck survive after being drowned in water, fire, and the rubble of a demolished skyscraper. Say what you want about Toyotas, but that's quite the engineering feat in my opinion!
Re: The Toyota Way
#48>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…
Previous discussion, 5 Whys: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11656575
Re: The Toyota Way
#49Isn't this based on a "philosophy" published by Bell Labs a couple of decades prior?
Can you point to a source or resource on that?
Re: The Toyota Way
#50>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…
> The case study also describes a couple of examples of assembly line workers pulling the stop levers and how management runs over asap (every minute of stoppage is much money lost) to ask the question "why" five times in order to understand the root issue of the process breakdown.
More than that, when the manager approaches the employee who stopped the line, she is not supposed to ask, "why did you stop the line?" She instead asks, "how can I help?"