Taiichi Ohno Quotes

One method is to try asking the question "why" as many times as it takes to get to an emotion. Usually this will happen by the fifth “why.” This is a technique adapted from the Toyota Production System described by Taiichi Ohno as the “5 Whys Method.” Ohno wrote that it was "the basis of Toyota's scientific approach ... by repeating ‘why?’ five times, the nature of the problem as well as its solution becomes clear.

Kaizen should be done when times are good or when the company is profitable, since your efforts to streamline and make improvements when the company is poor are limited to reduction in staff. Even if you try to go lean and cut out the fat to improve business performance, when your business is in a very difficult position financially there is no fat to be cut. If you are cutting out muscle, which you need, then you cannot say that your efforts to become lean are succeeding.The most important thing about doing kaizen is to do kaizen when times are good, the economy is strong, and the company is profitable

term Lean was coined by John Krafcik in a 1988 article based on his master’s thesis at MIT Sloan School of Management1 and then popularized in The Machine that Changed the World and Lean Thinking. Lean Thinking summarized Womack and Jones’s findings from studying how Toyota operates, an approach that was spearheaded by Taiichi Ohno, codified by Shigeo Shingo, and strongly influenced by the work of W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, Henry Ford, and U.S. grocery stores. Lean Thinking framed Toyota’s

Only the Gemba Can Do Cost Reduction

Machine cycle time and manual cycle time are still mixed up all over the world.

Taiichi Ohno blamed this batch-and-queue mode of thinking on civilization’s first farmers, who he claimed lost the one-thing-at-a-time wisdom of the hunter as they became obsessed with batches (the once-a-year harvest) and inventories (the grain depository).4 Or perhaps we’re simply born with batching thinking in our heads, along with many other “common sense” illusions—for example, that time is constant rather than relative or that space is straight rather than curved. But we all need to fight departmentalized, batch thinking because tasks can almost always be accomplished much more efficiently and accurately when the product is worked on continuously from raw material to finished good. In short, things work better when you focus on the product and its needs, rather than the organization or the equipment, so that all the activities needed to design, order, and provide a product occur in continuous flow.

Perhaps the more that a person is an intellectual the more they are prone to misconceptions.

To implement the Toyota production system in your own business, there must be a total understanding of waste. Unless all sources of waste are detected and crushed, success will always be just a dream.

How Long Will It Take? You can’t blame people for wanting instant results. Time is money, and quickness, especially quick OODA loops, is good. But when it comes to adopting maneuver conflict / Boyd’s principles to your business, there is a lot to be learned and a lot to be done. Consider that: •   According to its principle creator, Taiichi Ohno, it took 28 years (1945-1973) to create and install the Toyota Production System, which is maneuver conflict applied to manufacturing. •   It takes roughly 15 years of experience—and recognition as a leader in one’s technical field—to qualify as a susha (development manager) for a new Toyota vehicle.150 •   Studies of people regarded as the top experts in a number of fields suggest that they practice about four hours a day, virtually every day, for 10 years before they achieve a recognized level of mastery.151 •   It takes a minimum of 8 years beyond a bachelor’s degree to train a surgeon (4 years medical school and 4 or more years of residency.) •   It takes four to six years on the average beyond a bachelor’s degree to complete a Ph.D. •   It takes three years or so to earn a black belt (first degree) in the martial arts and four to six years beyond that to earn third degree, assuming you are in good physical condition to begin with. •   It takes a bare minimum of five years military service to qualify for the Special Forces “Green Beret” (minimum rank of corporal / captain with airborne qualification, then a 1-2 year highly rigorous and selective training program.) •   It takes three years to achieve proficiency as a first level leader in an infantry unit—a squad leader.152 It is no less difficult to learn to fashion an elite, highly competitive company. Yet for some reason, otherwise intelligent people sometimes feel they should be able to attend a three-day seminar and return home experts in maneuver conflict as applied to business. An intensive orientation session may get you started, but successful leaders study their art for years—Patton, Rommel, and Grant were all known for the intensity with which they studied military history and current campaigns. Then-LTC David Hackworth had commanded 10 other units before taking over the 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry in Vietnam in 1969, as he described in Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts. You may also recall the scene in We Were Soldiers where LTC Hal Moore unloaded armfuls of strategy and history books as he was moving into his quarters at Ft. Benning. At that point, he had been in the Army 20 years and had commanded at every level from platoon to battalion.

DECISIONS Useful: Graphical Presentation Monitor Key Indicators Effective Measurements Wisdom Knowledge The Goal: Strategic Thinking Predictive Value Experience and Judgment Automated Exception Notification Information Structured: Voluminous Grouped and Summarized Relationships Not Always Evident Raw Data: Massive Fragmented Meaningless Data EVENTS Figure 1-01. The Pyramid of KnowledgeToyota, this begins with genchi genbutsu, or gemba, which means literally “go see it for yourself. ” Taiichi Ohno, a founding father of Lean, once said, “Data is of course important in manufacturing, but I place the greatest emphasis on facts. ” 2 A direct and intuitive understanding of a situation is far more useful than mountains of data. The raw data stored in a database adds value for decision-making only if the right information is presented in the right format, to the right people, at the right time. A tall stack of printout may contain the right data, but it’s certainly not in an accessible format. Massive weekly batch printouts do not enable timely and proactive decisions. Raw data must be summarized, structured, and presented as digestible information. Once information is combined with direct experience, then the incredible human mind can extract and develop useful knowledge. Over time, as knowledge is accumulated and combined with direct experience and judgment, wisdom develops. This evolution is described by the classic pyramid of knowledge shown in Figure 1-01. BACK TO CHICAGO So what happened in Chicago? We can speculate upon several possible perspectives for why the team and its change leader were far from a true Lean system, yet they refused any help from IT providers: 1. They feared wasteful IT systems and procedures would be foisted on them.

contributed to “making things in a set.” I have many

Where there is no standard, there can be no improvement.

Having no problems is the biggest problem of all.

Progress cannot be generated when we are satisfied with existing situations.

All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing that time line by removing the non-value-added wastes.

Is it really economical to provide more information than we need - more quickly than we need it? This is like buying a large, high performance machine that produces too much. The extra items have to be stored in a warehouse, which increases the cost. Toyota's just-in-time production is a way to deliver exactly what the production line needs, when it is needed. This method does not require extra inventory. Similarly, we want information only when we need it. Information sent to production should be timed exactly.

We must dig up the real cause by asking why, why, why, why, why. Taiichi Ohno

Illusions can easily turn into conventional wisdom. Taiichi Ohno

Rationalize your operation when business is booming. Taiichi Ohno

Everyone confuses motion with work. Taiichi Ohno

The source of information is always the customer. Taiichi Ohno

Wasted motion is not work. Taiichi Ohno

Distinguish between movement and work to cultivate the ability to find waste. Taiichi Ohno

Usually mass production raises costs. Taiichi Ohno

We will not be able to blaze new trails unless we boldly turn our thinking processes upside down, and unless everyone participates in that revolution. Taiichi Ohno

Stand on the production floor all day and watch — eventually you will discover what has to be done. Taiichi Ohno

There is an explanation to these companies’ failure to implement Lean; an explanation that is apparent to any objective observer of a company like Hitachi Tool Engineering. The failure is due to the fundamental difference in the production environments. When Taiichi Ohno developed TPS, he didn’t do it in the abstract; he developed it for his company. It is no wonder that the powerful application that Ohno developed might not work in fundamentally different production environments.

The Lean Startup takes its name from the lean manufacturing revolution that Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo are credited with developing at Toyota. Lean thinking is radically altering the way supply chains and production systems are run. Among its tenets are drawing on the knowledge and creativity of individual workers, the shrinking of batch sizes, just-in-time production and inventory control, and an acceleration of cycle times. It taught the world the difference between value-creating activities and waste and showed how to build quality into products from the inside out.

Hacer a medias es no hacer en absoluto Como ya dije, Scrum tomó muchas de sus ideas del modelo japonés de manufactura codificado en el libro clásico The Toyota Production System de Taiichi Ohno. En Estados Unidos, este modelo se interpretó como manufactura “saneada”. Básicamente, la idea es eliminar todo desperdicio posible en la fábrica. Y aunque la mayoría de nosotros no perseguimos mejorar el flujo de trabajo de una planta automotriz, algunas de las ideas de ese sistema son aplicables a cualquier clase de labor. Un concepto que quiero tocar aquí es el de “trabajo en proceso” o “inventario”. La idea es que tener muchas cosas regadas que no sirven para nada constituye un desperdicio. Esas cosas, sean puertas de automóviles o artilugios de cualquier especie, cuestan dinero y si están en la fábrica quiere decir que grandes sumas de dinero están atadas a un inventario que no se necesita por