TPS Benchmarking Archives | Page 2 of 6

The Correct Sequence for Implementing Lean Systems

By Jon Miller - December 26th, 2009

Looking through some of my notes from seminars, salons and study sessions I participated in during November and December, I came across an interesting string of characters: JID > JIT > TWI > SW > TQC? This was code to mysel

Green Manufacturing Tour of Toyota Tsutsumi

By Jon Miller - October 31st, 2009

An article on the CarAdvice.com.au website titled Toyota’s Tsutsumi Plant – tour a green role model highlights some of the advances Toyota has made at the factory which assembles the Prius hybrid car. Some featured environm

Lean Thinker Interview with Chris Schrandt

By Jon Miller - 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

There is No Such Thing as Wasteful Work

By Jon Miller - June 16th, 2009

I read an interesting article today in the Japanese paper Nihon Keizai Shimbun. The topic was how white collar businesses men in Japan are adapting the Toyota Production System, or what we would call lean thinking, to their work. The c

A GPS for the TPS

By Jon Miller - May 5th, 2009

One of the common objections we hear to doing kaizen is that “We’ve tried it before” and it didn’t work. It’s amazing that this could ever be a reason for people to stop trying, yet it is. Last summer I sp

The Lean System is Making the Most of What You've Got

By Jon Miller - May 2nd, 2009

If I had a dollar bill for every time someone said to me “This is not Japan” or “We don’t build automobiles” or “We don’t make the same thing over and over again like Toyota” then I would

How Do Lean Processes Prevent Human Error?

By Jon Miller - March 24th, 2009

Scott asked an important question on how lean processes can be used to prevent human errors. The good news is that lean processes not only support quality but they lean cannot function without a strong quality culture and organizationa

10 Things the Amish Can Teach Toyota Leadership

By Jon Miller - March 18th, 2009

Some of my friend have shared stories with me recently of the genchi genbutsu trips Toyota executives from Japan have been making by visiting factories overseas. On their next visit they should take a slight detour to to one of the Mid

Taiichi Ohno’s Three Lessons for the New Toyota President

By Jon Miller - February 26th, 2009

Yesterday Kevin Meyer provided a useful summary of how Toyota is getting back to basics, as described in the Wall Street Journal article titled “A Scion Drives Toyota Back to Basics”. Here are the key takeaways from both so

TBP: Toyota Business Practice

By Jon Miller - February 22nd, 2009

Are you interested in practical problem-solving and continuous improvement methodologies? In this blog post, we explore the Toyota Business Practice (TBP) and its relationship with PDCA and A3 thinking. We also take a closer look at th

The Top 10 Titans of TPS

By Jon Miller - February 8th, 2009

Sean asked an interesting question: Who would you consider to be the titans of the TPS? Certainly, there was Ohno and Shingo, but is there anyone else that should be on the list? I like to connect the history to people because it shows

3 More Practical Ways to Show Respect for Humanity

By Jon Miller - February 3rd, 2009

One of the underlying principles of the Toyota Production System is the founder’s desire to instill in Toyota’s workers a deeply spiritual sense of respect for humanity in the course of operating a manufacturing company. Al

5 Why? vs. Why Not?

By Jon Miller - January 24th, 2009

The Toyota Why Not website came my way via Twitter. It’s an interesting distraction. The best part is the birds chirping. I actually looked for an open window until I realized that birds don’t chirp in January in Seattle. T

Lesson for Toyota from the Classics: the Cost of Victory

By Jon Miller - January 22nd, 2009

It’s a shame that future leaders of major corporations such as Toyota and GM no longer receive education in the Classics. If they had, maybe the senior executives at Toyota would have remembered the story of King Pyrrhus of Epiru

Questions Raised by Voluntary Kaizen Policy at Toyota

By Jon Miller - August 31st, 2008

Doing some more research into the “voluntary” overtime issue as a management practice in Japan, we found that American fast food giant McDonald’s was recently hit with the same ruling as Toyota and must now pay their

We Do Not Make What We Do Not Sell: No More Trucks in Indiana

By Jon Miller - July 13th, 2008

It is no mistake to say that the people at the top of Toyota, the President, CEO, Chairman and other executives all thoroughly understand production control. How many CEOs in the world can say this? In a word we might say that in TPS t

Genjitsu: The Only Reality

By Jon Miller - June 24th, 2008

There are those moments when the right words come together in an a way that resonates deeply and inspires one to write them down and repeat them to others. The words by themselves are not profound, and one suspects that even rearranged

Toyota’s Secret to Kaizen Success: Unpaid OT?

By Jon Miller - May 24th, 2008

There was an interesting development at Toyota last week. Articles reported titles such as Toyota to raise overtime pay for ‘voluntary’ work. Titles included terms of interest, not often combined: kaizen, voluntary, overwor

Where does the time go?

By Jon Miller - May 5th, 2008

That’s what I wondered when seeing that it’s been nearly a week since the last post. It’s an idle question, until you start to think about it. Then you get dizzy, stop and look to those who came before us for insight.

The Secret of TPS

By Jon Miller - April 6th, 2008

The Toyota Production System (TPS) is widely recognized as a cornerstone of Lean manufacturing. It’s characterized by just in time production and judoka, delivering precisely what customers want when they want it. Toyota’s

Comments on Toyota President Watanabe's New Year's Greeting

By Jon Miller - January 1st, 2008

Toyota entered the popular consciousness in 2007 by overtaking General Motors as the number one automobile manufacturer in the world by vehicles sold. Those of us who study lean manufacturing know that Toyota with its production system

Lean Enterprise Rules of Three

By Jon Miller - December 17th, 2007

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar.” That’s from an eu

Start Simple, Go Back to Basics, Repeat

By Jon Miller - December 12th, 2007

This is an image of the assembly line at Toyota’s Honsha plantin Koromo City, over 60 years ago. We may think we have come a long way from this, but in fact nearly every month I see a 21st century factory that looks not too diffe

Toyota’s Suggestion System: 56 Years and Still Going Strong

By Jon Miller - December 9th, 2007

In 1951 Toyota launched its Creative Idea Suggestion System. It was largely a copy of suggestion systems that were in place in U.S. companies at the time, namely the Ford Motor Company. Toyota made some notable innovations to it over t

Muri, Hubris and the Laws of Proportion

By Jon Miller - November 28th, 2007

One reason that the Toyota Production System is so effective is that it is built around many fundamental principles which apply universally. One of these pieces of timeless wisdom is that muri is bad and should be avoided. Muri is the

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