Common Roots

Lean Manufacturing is increasingly recognized worldwide as the most productive approach to manufacturing. Interestingly, most companies do not realize that Lean is actually a blend of both old and new concepts. Henry Ford knew in 1926 he could keep the prices of his products low by shortening the production cycle and standardizing methods, and he proceeded to build his manufacturing empire on the concept of eliminating waste. If this sounds familiar it should.

• Henry Ford
  Earned unprecedented profits in 1926 by eliminating waste to gradually reduce the production cycle from iron ore to finished product to 81 hours.
• Kaizen
  A low-cost, commonsense approach to continuous improvement by eliminating Muda (waste).
• Lean Manufacturing
  Do more with less by eliminating non-value-adding activities.
• Toyota Production System (TPS)
  Continuously reduce the time-line between Order and Cash by eliminating non-value-added waste.

Lean Manufacturing

We all know WHAT to do about Waste, the problem is DOING IT. Companies today keep asking the question, “Why is it that continuous improvement never seems to be continuous when implementing Lean.” Some answers:

• Supervisors and managers often leave improvement until after “making the numbers.”
• People tend to rely on others for improvements.
• Companies tend to rely on “scheduled events” to make even small changes.
• People who do the work are typically not part of the improvement process.
• People resist change; as mindset causing them to backslide and abandon improvement.
• Even when workers are involved and want to improve, they don’t have the improvement skills.

It appears we never learned the lesson from Henry Ford, who wrote in his book Today and Tomorrow, that, “We hold that it is part of our industrial duty—that is, part of our service that supports the wage motive—to help people to help themselves.” Let’s take a closer look at the roles of a supervisor in Kaizen, Toyota and then Lean for a critical connection.

Kaizen

In his book Gemba Kaizen, Masaaki Imai, devotes an entire chapter to define the roles of a supervisor in Gemba as follows:

• Create a good working environment
• Deal with abnormalities at the worksite
• Prepare work standards
• Provide training to ensure operators do their work according to standards
• Improve status quo by improving standards
• Notice abnormalities and address immediately to keep the process under control

Toyota

In his book The Toyota Way, Jeffrey Liker tells us that “The Toyota Way of going to the source, observing in detail, and learning by doing were all very much influenced by TWI and became the backbone of Toyota’s standardization philosophy” and that “standardized work should be a cooperative effort between the foreman and the worker.” In support of this role of a supervisor, TWI training is the training of choice for “Strict adherence to standardized operations for new employee training and review of parts of the training system to enable quick learning of TPS.” (Toyota article Relations with Employees, page 50).

Critical Connections

Toyota embraced TWI in 1951, trained their people as the Toyota Production System was developed fully in the 1960’s and is used to this day because TWI

• Indoctrinates people into an “improvement” frame of mind.
• Teaches people how to identify opportunities for improving their jobs.
• Trains people how to generate ideas to take advantage of these opportunities.
• Shows people how to get these ideas into practice right away.
• Creates ownership for people to maintain standard work.

Lean Supervisors today must spend a majority of their time dealing with people and process issues at the job level to sustain Lean same as they did at Boeing in 1940 Learn more >>

• Addressing daily performance problems
• Motivating people
• Encouraging cooperation
• Settling disputes
• Promoting planned change

With the essential skills gained through the TWI program, today’s supervisors will be able to:

• Accept responsibility for improvement
• Communicate effectively
• Develop teams to involve their people
• Delegate responsibility and train others

So Production people will be able to:

• Accept responsibility for their work
• Participate in the improvement process
• Learn how to interact as part of a team
• Increase their level of job satisfaction

Training Within Industry, TWI, is a critical element of the acclaimed Toyota Production System, TPS, sustaining continuous improvement and maintaining momentum. Since 2001, when it was reintroduced to the U.S. and integrated with Lean Manufacturing efforts, TWI has helped companies sustain the gains from Lean to create a true continuous improvement culture.