Perhaps the best thing that could happen to manufacturing improvement is the debacle that is unfolding at Toyota. It will put to rest so much of the nonsense and oushikuso that has pervaded lean manufacturing since day one – and it should help to drive the charlatans away.
Not familiar with the term oushikuso? Copy it and paste it to this site in the box that says 'Japanese to English Dictionary' and click 'translate'.
Got it?
There is no such thing as 'Toyota DNA' and excellent manufacturing is not some Toyota zen philosophy that arose like the Phoenix from that ashes of Japan after World War II that cannot be understood – just taken on faith because it is some wildly successful, ethereal Toyota world view. To paraphrase Doc Holladay in Wyatt Earp, "There is no mysticism my friend. There is only what we do."
Excellent manufacturing is a complicated, knotty set of fundamental management and factory economic principles and practices, all rooted in sound engineering and financial logic. It is not easy to understand, and even more difficult to translate and apply to any particular business becasue it is typically a radical departure from the engineering and financial principles by which the business operated in the past. Kudos to Toyota for contributing so much to the development of those principles and practices.
But the 'Toyota Way' is not The Way for the Acme Manufacturing Company in Omaha, Brisbane, Munich, Shanghai or anywhere else. The Way for those companies – every company for that matter – is that company's own way based on the difficult application of the same core engineering and financial principles to their unique business circumstances. Seeking to imitate Toyota simply for the sake of imitating Toyota, and holding Toyota up as the infallible ruler of the manufacturing world from some factory high atop Mount Olympus is folly.
Toyota – and the notion that there is some unseen, unknowable element to their success that has to be taken on faith simply because that is how Toyota does it - has been the lifeblood for far too many consultants, authors and academics for far too many years. They have plugged 'because that's how Toyota does it' into any holes in their understanding of manufacturing, usually adding to their false expertise by shrouding the whole thing with a lot of Japanese terms. You must know the seven wastes by their Japanese terms, and the 5 S's as well. They cannot explain how those wastes and S's actually translate into bottom line problems, or how the Japanese termed solutions – kanbans and kaizens and kaikaku – are cost effective solutions. They just preach that you must eliminate muda with kaizen because that is the Toyota Way – and look at how good Toyota is doing! And mere knowledge of those terms and a few Toyota techniques makes them the senseis who can do it for you!
The failure of Toyota in such a spectacular manner should make it clear to the manufacturing community that the notion that reaching the Toyota promised land by eliminating the muda with a kaizen that only a sensei can lead is oushikuso. About time, I say.
While I certainly hope for the best for Toyota and all of its employees – and there certainly has been and still is far more good than bad about Toyota – if their problems result in driving the pretenders and their nonsense from manufacturing, and it enables the manufacturing community to focus on sound principles regardless of the source, then we have all come out ahead.
Chris Mahan says
My Japanese wife left Japan in 1990 and maybe ushi-kuso (literally cow manure) is more used now, but she says the unmentionable Americanism is best translated as “detarame”, which she says means “a complete lie” and the dictionary you linked to calls “Irresponsible utterance, nonsense.”
It is pronounced de – ta – ra – me,
de like destroy
ta like tactic
ra like the “la” in lattice, with just a little more rolling of the tongue on the ridge behind the front upper teeth. (how’s that for specific procedure?)
me like “menage-a-trois”
Otherwise, a few years ago I gave a ride to the airport to a Japanese friend of my wife’s who was visiting from Japan. He worked in HR in Japan and had worked with Toyota and Toyota HR. He said that while they were thorough, there were still “issues”. His limited English and the fact that we were bone tired, and driving on the 405 at night, precluded further elaboration…
Maybe the Toyota System has a rest-of-the-world impedance mismatch that shows up spectacularly once in a while.
He’s coming to visit this summer; maybe I’ll breach the subject again.
Mark Welch says
Well, whether you call it oushikuso or ushi-kuso, it’s the same thing when you step in it – in reality or figuratively.
Adrian says
Really great piece Bill, it’s a bit like the Emperors new clothes in a way. I always think of the Toyota system as like a Giant Case Study and that your own “mileage” may vary through using the same tools techniques – there are all-sorts of variables that can impact improvement activities with often the key one being the organizations culture and simply overlaying a template doesn’t always work. It’ll be interesting to see what the Toyota “situation” has on the “improvement” industry it isn’t necessarily a good thing that one of the “founding fathers” is having a hard time as these tools and techniques DO work and with Toyota failing it’s possible that this situation will just feed the skeptics.
Robert "Doc" Hall says
My original Japanese sensei in TPS has been saying for about 10 years that Toyota was riding for a fall, but did not expect it to be quite so spectacular. Attempts to transition from “peopleware” that worked very well in a mid-sized company to operations all over the world were always a little behind the growth curve. And it never made the jump from a high-quality technology follower to a high-quality technology leader.
The real test of the system and of Toyota is now. The weak points are on display. Other companies might have responded better to this crisis. They have more experience being dragged through the media mud.
A vehicle today is a complex, high-tech device that is expected to work perfectly over a longer lifetime — the difference between a 1980 Corolla and a 2010 Lexus. Three of the last four automotive projects I have seen have been about 75% staffed by software engineers. Make one little goof in design, and no amount of plant lean can make it up. In addition, these things are so much like computers that the OEMs should be launching a lifetime record with each vehicle including the updated versions of the software on each one. And the stuff has to integrate perfectly with each update.
It isn’t just Toyota. The rest of the industry has to figure this out soon. De facto, it has a lifetime responsibility for performance. Building a well-done design correctly is only the start of this responsibility. Welcome to the post-industrial world. What we call lean thinking today has to “rise to a new level,” to use that trite sports jargon.
Bill Waddell says
Thanks for the comment and the insight, Doc. No one’s input to any discussion concerning lean – its past, present or future – means more than yours.