TPS Benchmarking

Lean Thinker Interview with Chris Schrandt

Avatar photo By Jon Miller Published on August 19th, 2009


It is our pleasure to bring you the Lean Thinker Interview series from Gemba Academy. Over the following months we will feature people with interesting insights and stories to share about their experience learning and applying lean. In this 9-minute video Chris Schrandt will share his background, talk about respect for people, how Toyota uses technology and explain how he became an expert in practical problem solving and A3 writing.

Avatar photo

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.

  1. Daniel Markovitz

    August 19, 2009 - 2:43 pm
    Reply

    Jon,
    This video rocks! Thanks for posting it. In the future, it would be cool to see some more nitty-gritty questions & answers — *how* to actually do & implement some of the ideas.

  2. Jon Miller

    August 19, 2009 - 2:55 pm
    Reply

    Thanks for the great suggestion Dan. We’re just getting started with this series so we can definitely add tougher questions in the future.

  3. Harish

    August 20, 2009 - 5:07 am
    Reply

    Hi Jon,
    That was a wonderful interview. Thank you for that.
    Does Toyota’s TPS handbook teach about VSM? I know it talked about the material and information flow. This was the first thing that Chris talked about after talking about identifying waste. On the Kaizen Express book, VSM was written in the katakana script and gave pronunciation as balyu stream mappingu. Kaizen Express ofcourse is not endorsed by Toyota.
    I still struggle with the identification of VSM as an integral TPS / Lean tool. This was echoed in an article on a latest Pharmaceutical magazine where the author downplayed the use of a process flow chart and preached about the VSM.
    -Harish

  4. Jon Miller

    August 20, 2009 - 8:20 am
    Reply

    Hi Harish
    Toyota does cover “material and information flow diagramming” in their TPS handbook but they do not call it value stream mapping. That is a term coined by the Lean Enterprise Institute.
    The process flow chart is also a good tool and used as and essentail part of the TPS. The TPS is built on a foundation of TQC (Total Quality Control) which relies heavily on the 7 QC tools, of which the process flow chart is one.

  5. moemen mahmoud

    May 9, 2010 - 10:05 am
    Reply

    chris ,i missed you teacher , this is really awesome, i was sure when they asked you about the tool preferred for you that u gonna answer its value stream map, heheh , i know that u really like this one , u r right it is the best ever

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