What Auto Company Gets No Satisfaction?
December 5th, 2006 by HalFord might come to mind. Not only have they paid people to leave, so many have left that they now have to make new hires. Training will cost. Quality may suffer. But Ford is not the auto maker I'm writing about. It's Toyota.
No Satisfaction at Toyota is a story about Toyota's relentless attack on complacency. Charles Fishman writes,
"Improvements aren't "projects" or "initiatives." They are the work, (the employees') work, every day, every week. That's one of the subtle but distinctive characteristics of a Toyota factory. The supervisors and managers aren't "bosses" in any traditional American sense. Their job is to find ways to do the work better: more efficiently, more effectively."
In short, the work of everyone is kaizen. And then some…
"Toyota's Georgetown factory…only looks like a car factory. It's really a big brain — a kind of laboratory focused on a single mission: not how to make cars, but how to make cars better."
How's that for a mission? How does it compare with the mission of your company? But there's one more twist:
"At its Olympian best, Toyota adds one more level: It is always looking to improve the process by which it improves all the other processes."
Toyota calls itself a "problems first" company. By keeping attention on what they can do better and then doing something about it Toyota pulls just a little further ahead. They do that thousands of times each day. Is that out of reach? Hardly. One specialty contractor I know has about 525 employees. For each of the last 7 months those people have been responsible for over 600 Quick 'n Easy kaizens. These people are improving their business at the rate of 7,000 adopted improvements each year. I don't know about you, but that inspires me. I can hear Mick singing… Time to reread the FC article.
Related Posts
- The Lean Six Sigma Elephant in the Room I am cautious writing this post. Some people have been calling attention to an elephant in the room. KT Cat is one o...
- Humility Makes Toyota Different From the Lean Insider: Speaking to Toyota employees at the Detroit Auto Show President Watanabe asked that they take r...
- Customers, Promises, and TOC Final remarks on the series on Theory of Constraints Frank, Joe, and I had fun blogging collaboratively on the Theory o...
- When the NY Times Writes about The Toyota Way You Better Listen While others are writing about Jet Blue's Passenger Bill of Rights I'll continue writing about Toyota. Toyota is in t...
- What Are Your New Year’s Lean Resolutions Ralph Bernstein writing at Lean Insider for Productivity Press posted his proposal for 10 Lean Resolutions for the New...
