Everyone else has been trying, but none has yet succeeded to match
the outstanding performance of the Toyota production system. The system grew
naturally out of the workings of the company over five decades. As a result, it
has never been written down. Steven Spear and H. Kent Bowen have done an
extensive research for four years on what makes the Toyota production system
standout from others. They’ve found that, whenever Toyota defines a
specification, it is establishing sets of hypotheses that can then be tested.
In other words, it is following the “scientific method”. Steven Spear and H.
Kent Bowen have summarized Toyota’s production strategy under four rules.
Rule number one, ‘All work shall be highly specified as to content,
sequence, timing, and outcome’. In other words, they have introduced well-defined,
timed sequence of steps for a particular job and for a particular employee.
Employee is expected to follow the steps exactly as specified during the
constrained time and if he was unable to do so or if there is a problem, it
will be immediately apparent and the employee and the supervisor can move to
correct the problem right away.
While first rule looks at getting the specified task done, the
second rule looks at how people connect.
It explains ‘every customer supplier connection must be direct, and
there must be an unambiguous yes-or-no way to send requests and receive
responses’ In other words every connection must be standardized and direct,
unambiguously specifying the people involved, the form and quantity of the
goods and services to be provided, the way requests are made by each customer,
and the expected time in which the requests will be met.
As of rule number four, ‘any improvement must be made in accordance
with the scientific method, under the guidance of a teacher, at the lowest
possible level in the organization’. Toyota believes that people are the most
significant corporate asset and investments in their knowledge and skills are
necessary to build competitiveness. Each plant and major business unit in the
Toyota Group employs a number of Toyota Production System consultants whose
primary responsibility is to help senior managers move their organizations
toward the ideal. Many of these individuals have received intensive training at
Toyota's Operations Management Consulting Division. Usually Front line workers make
the improvements to their own jobs, and their supervisors provide direction and
assistance as teachers.
In Toyota’s philosophy, an ideal employee, or group of employees
or a machine is; is defect free; can deliver one request at a time; can supply on
demand in the version requested; can deliver immediately; can produce without
wasting any materials, labor, energy, or other resources and can produce in a
work environment that is safe physically, emotionally, and professionally for
every employee.
NUMMI; “New United Motor Manufacturing Inc.” was a joint venture
between Toyota and General Motors. Before they became a joint venture, general
motors factory was known as “worst plant in the world” By joining as a joint
venture, together they changed that. General Motors was responsible for
marketing and sales while Toyota was responsible for production process. Toyota
totally turned around the production factory from worst to the best in America.
NUMMI was very careful when hiring employees, every applicant went through
three days of production simulations, written examinations and interviews. The
NUMMI production system not only made people work harder, it made them work
smarter as well. More than 90% of the employees were “satisfied” or “very
satisfied” with their work.
NUMMI’s production system was finely tuned, superbly integrated
and exceptionally consistent. The assembly line was a just in time (JIT) operation
and it greatly reduced the work in progress. Each machine and process was
designed to detect malfunctions, missing parts and improper assemblies
automatically. Every job was carefully analyzed to achieve maximum efficiency.
Job rotation was standard and every worker was cross trained in every tasks. It
only differed with the production system in Japan in only two aspects. It had a
strong commitment to social context of work and standardization.
Toyota revolutionized the production process. It never stopped
innovating. This is the reason it’s still the world’s largest car manufacturer.
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