Lean

Use Only Reliable, Thoroughly Tested Means

By Jon Miller Published on September 30th, 2008

Principle number 8 of the Toyota Way, as defined in Jeffrey Liker’s book of the same name states:
Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and processes.

Software code is mostly reliable once it is set up, not prone to the wear and tear of material things, but it seems no amount of testing can be thorough enough to root out all of those invisible bugs. With the intention of putting the customer (you, the reader) first, we recently upgraded the blogging platform to add some features including reducing the delays in posting comments. In spite of good intentions, posting of comments is for the moment broken and for a short time you may experience problems in posting comments or other glitches on this website.
When technology is so cheap and ubiquitous we don’t hesitate to try less reliable and not so thoroughly tested means. Experimentation is a good thing, but sometimes I wonder at the level of overwork and correction this generates. I think there is wisdom in Toyota’s way.
Please bear with us. Once we are through those issues we will be making further changes to the design and content of this blog.
Thank you for reading and have a great day.

Jon Miller

Jon has dedicated his 25+ year career to the field of kaizen, continuous improvement, and lean management. Jon spent the first eighteen years of his life in Japan, then graduated from McGill University with a bachelor’s in linguistics.