The Secret of TPS

It seems to me that the fact that the TPS works is proof enough that there’s no secret to it — at least, if there is a secret, all 300,000 Toyota employees must be in on it, and they must be awfully good at keeping their mouths shut.
I wonder how much of this comes from the obsession in US business with trade secrets and proprietary techniques. (Personally, I blame Thomas Edison.)

Like most great religions and traditions that are passed-down the centuries, they happen via oral transmission and, the culture, is largely unwritten. But, the form and function is followed, but is largely unwritten — until — much later.
The same thing happened with TPS. TPS came out of rigorous experimentation, standardization, and experimentation again. Most literature and researchers didn’t pay attention to Toyota until the 80’s, when MIT and Womack highlighted Toyota and observed that something was different.
Within the tradition, things are different too. Unlike the popular culture, fads, and industries that have sprung-up around the Toyota Production System, the language and behavior of internal Toyota people are quite different.
For example, the term “value stream” doesn’t even exist at Toyota, yet it’s a term that is widely used in popular culture; there are even “value stream manager” positions on monster.com and in other job sites. It’s amusing.
People substitute the tools and methods for a culture; this fallacy is akin to saying that a community of saints are charitable because they all read the same bible. No — the community behaves the way it does because of something else that they have internalized — the bible helps, but there’s something other.
Popular culture doesn’t get this. There’s something much deeper, yet it’s incredibly simple and elegant.

Maybe what is being overlooked is the incredible “common sense” of Taichi Ohno. It seems he had an willingness to face reality and study it that most managers today lack.
I enjoy this site.

hai all!
Really interesting, what we all are discussing about success of toyota, do we ever analysed about ourselves, always thinking about other’s philosophy, we all learned a lot, now its time to put the learning in implementing, and one more thing..do not give up continious thinking for improvement about all existing systems.

Indeed, the discussion is touching on the most sensitive and probably most discussed and debated aspect of Lean: What are we missing?
I will add just a couple of things to the great comments you all put into this discussion. First of all, as probably most people coming back from the 1st trip to Toyota in Japan felt – and not visiting a North American facility before – I came back convinced that “We will never be able to do it in NA; we are just different and the difference works against us in this aspect.”
Boy, how wrong I was! Few months later I visited Toyota in Cambridge, Ontario, a NA copy of the plant I had visited in Japan – Toyota Kyushu -. It was only one Japanese executive in the whole facility – the second in command after the President -. Not only that they would produce on the same production line the same models as they did in Kyushu; there was actually no difference – or at least I was not able to see it – in a North American Toyota facility comparing to a Japanese one. That confused me completely. How is that possible? Again, what are we missing? For someone that thought was on his way to understand the system was a big step back as I realised how wrong I was when I thought we can’t perform at the same level.
Few months later the answer came in a matter of minutes! My search ended when a Toyota trainer put the very first slide up and asked: “What do you think is this?” It was a stylish logo that we all had guesses but nobody really got it. The answer came as a blessing for all my efforts to understand what we were missing: “It’s a C and a J that’s joined together, Canadian and Japanese people and cultures working together to create a unique and even stronger TMMC culture.”
Then I could move on with my life; that was what was missing. Toyota never thought the way I did – i.e. “it will never work in NA as we are different…” -. They didn’t need to change anyone or implement any new culture in the sense I was thinking at it. They wanted to create a Toyota “culture” that would not make any difference where the people were born or raised; it was the same everywhere Toyota was present, regardless of the country, continent or what cars were produced in the facility. I read in another blog that GM learned a lot from the NUMMI cooperation with Toyota. Yes, process wise we learned a lot in NA. We missed the soft but the most important side of it: the PEOPLE. That is what I believe we missed and it will take us some time to recover. Once we understand this simple “secret”, we will be on our way.
Happy Holidays to you all!
George
[email protected]
http://www.ELSEinc.com