While the mass producers who are agog about innovation are right in line with the hare in the old ‘Tortoise and the Hare’ parable, lean manufacturers are a blend of the tortoise’s long term view and hare-like ability to change direction.  While Ford and GM pine for the days when they had a product that thrilled the market, I can name no such Toyota product.  Instead, they have had thirty or forty years of a range of good quality products – not a Mustang among ’em ‘ – and the ability to make whichever of them in any quantity the customers wanted.  They have not led the market in minivans or hybrid cars, but they have been ready to move into them quickly and effectively when the market wanted them.

It seems to me that innovation is the darling of the professional manager who has been unable to grasp lean manufacturing.  They are plodding down the highway, baffled that everyone else is going so much faster than them, unable to recognize the concept of the wheel. Most of them will still be trying to figure out a faster way to get from point A to point B than walking when they are laid in their graves with tire tracks running the length of their backs.

Bob Lutz and Mark Fields have talked loud and often about the urgent need to create exciting, innovative products.  GM will be saved when Lutz comes up with something that duplicates the effect the minivan had at Chrysler; and the boys at Ford are feverishly trying to dream up the next Mustang or Taurus.  They are going to invent and create and conjure up something so wonderful, the whole world will be ready to drop their Toyotas and Hondas off at the junkyard to get in on the product of their innovation.  At its heart, the product innovation theory is based on the idea that, if you can invent something fantastic enough, the demand will be so great that mass production can come back from the grave and make us all rich again.

On the other hand, there is Chrysler in Belvidere, Illinois.  Their assembly plant makes three different models and is "flexible enough to vary the production mix between three products anywhere from 0 to 100 percent of each model"     The third shift at the plant is being staffed entirely with ‘temporary workers’, although the temps will have a job for at least two years, and receive health benefits after eight months.  Starting pay is $18 an hour.  "The new workplace model lets employees design their own work stations."  Who knows if this model will work for Chrysler, but the objective is part of Chrysler’s move to "flood the market with a record 10 new products in a single year."  Put ten new products out there, build factories that can make any or all of them in any mix, and be able to turn on a dime in whatever direction the customers want to go.

There is not a single ‘innovation’ in the Chrysler scheme (although, like the body shop guy, they may think they invented it).  Mixed models on one line; not quite zero minute exchange of tooling, but faster than the line cycles; using temporary employees to supplement the workforce; employee designed work stations – it has all been done before.  The power of Belvidere is not in any invention.  It is recognizing the change in the auto business and adapting.  Ten models in one year and not relying on any one of them to be a superstar in order to make money is the essence of the Toyota business model.

I learned innovation’s proper perspective when I had the privilege of translating Hiroyuki Hirano’s book, JIT Is Flow, from the crude Jangalese in which it was written to the king’s English (or at least the twisted version of English I know).  Hirano is a brilliant guy and he wrote a section comparing  manufacturing survival to the Theory of Evolution.

Evolution is basically built around the idea that every species has its freaks and mutations loitering around the fringes, most of which cannot survive and soon die.  But every now and then there is a radical change in the environment or a new predator comes along and the species is in trouble.  Inevitably, one of those fringe mutants happens to be ideally suited to cope with the new challenge.  The rest of the species either recognizes the power of the mutant and breeds with it, assuring the survival of its offspring, or it fails to take advantage of the power of the mutant and dies.

Hirano’s analogy is perfect.  Every industry has its ventures and startups around the fringes driven by innovative people with wild ideas – most of them unworkable or impractical, but with the rare gem like Bill Gates.  Imitating Bill Gates is great – if you have the stomach for it.  Your odds would be better if you took the money available to invest in your innovation to Las Vegas and put it all on #22 for one spin of the roulette wheel.  We certainly need people of the Gates and Edison sort, but adopting their blend of ‘one part genius – one part kamikaze pilot’ as advocated  by the folks at McKenzie and Wharton in the name of innovation is pretty poor advice for management.  The lean model has been sitting in Georgetown for over twenty years – the mutation that can save the species.  Instead, the management gurus have been unable to realize it’s saving power, so they have all trudged off to stare at Bill Gates for a while to see if they can breed with him.

As you are reading this, at least six academics and a dozen consultants are probably writing up case studies and white papers on the body shop’s ‘innovation’ – the current big time management fad.  CEO’s should be building innovative organizations, and every one will compete on the basis of innovation.  Thinkers of great thoughts are agonizing over individual innovation versus organizational innovation.  IBM has remade their their entire carnival spiel around innovation.  They are now the "Innovator’s Innovator".  Pretty innovative slogan, don’t ya’ think?

The business world is paying homage to the great innovator Bill Gates this weekend following the announcement that he is stepping down from his Microsoft management role.  He is certainly deserving of all the adulation, and there is no question that his success is the result of extraordinary innovation.  Bill Gates and Paul Allen were not the only people tinkering in the basement with way outside the box computer ideas back in the 70’s, however.  Bill Gates road to success is lined with the tombstones of other innovators.  There were thousands of others working just as feverishly and almost as brilliantly.  For a range of reasons, most of the others failed.  According to the thesaurus, one synonym for ‘innovate’ is ‘pioneer’.  Pioneers are always easy to spot.  They are the ones along the side of the trail with the arrows in their backs. 

Why should a manufacturer decide that its entire future hinges on the high risk strategy of adding to the innovation pool?  The problem with manufacturing is hardly a lack of innovation – there are plenty of great innovations laying around for the taking.  The problem is that powerful innovations take place every day everywhere, and manufacturers fail to see them, or fail to appreciate them, or find themselves unable to take advantage of them.  The Toyota Production System was a fantastic management innovation that, despite its demonstrated strength and near universal applicability, is still almost exclusively limited to Toyota.

There’s a guy named Giarrizzo running a chain of body shops in Cleveland who is taking them nationwide and hopes to patent lean manufacturing – he sincerely thinks it was his idea.  The way he is applying lean to the body shop business is impressive enough.  He is focused on cycle time and optimizing the value added ratio.  He has taken all of the employees off of the old piece work system and put them on a fixed salary.  He also tossed out the traditional approach of having each guy bring his own tools.  Instead, the company has bought and devised all of the special tools it takes to best get the job done.  It is making money for him and has driven customer satisfaction way up.

"If you can have that car being touched all day, it is going to get out of the shop quicker," Giarrizzo said, thereby demonstrating that he has mastered lean economics 101.  Don’t get me wrong about this.  I am very impressed with anyone who succeeds in a lean endeavor, and I believe Mr. Giarrizzo will force the rest of the body shops in the U.S. to get lean or get out, which is good for everybody.  Where I scratch my head is when he gets to the point of being so impressed with his system that they decide to patent it. 

There is a solid core of lean re-manufacturing wizards at Warner Robins Air Logistics Center in Georgia who will scratch their heads at this so hard their hair will fall out trying to figure out exactly what the body shop is doing they don’t already do with to C-5’s.  In fact, Mr. Giarrizzo has invented, created, and innovated nothing.  Lean re-manufacturing has been around for a long time.  90% of what the body shop is doing I presented at the Total Manufacturing Performance Conference way back in 1991 – and about 90% of that I plagiarized from other people who thought it up before I did.

The body shop did not innovate, at least they did not "begin or introduce something new", which is the dictionary definition of innovation.  What they did – which is a whole lot more important than innovation – was recognized a significant change, and adapted it to their organization.  That is why Mr. Giarrizzo is going to make a lot of money.  Most body shop owners will either not recognize the new model at all, or they will conjure up excuses why it won’t work (in spite of Giarrizzo’s success staring them in the face) or they will devise a hundred reasons why they are different and it won’t work for them.  And they will eventually go out of business.  Any time they spend along the way trying to "begin or introduce something new", instead of adapting lean principles like Giarrizzo did will be time wasted.