Page 47 - How To Implement Lean Manufacturing

28 Cha pte r T w o

with assurance that most companies who entertain the option of mimicking the TPS do
not have the sound foundation that Ohno describes in his writings. After all, that is
what made them Toyota and the TPS only took them farther along.
Herein lies an interesting aside. It is part of the genius of Ohno and others like him
that they do not care if you try to copy them. They know that you can’t unless you have
undertaken and built the foundation that they had in place when they started their
individual journey of quantity control.
Most think they can bypass this step and are always disappointed to find that there
are no shortcuts. If you want the benefits of the TPS, the foundational issues must be
addressed. It does not mean you should not embark on the journey. I am not saying
that. In short, the foundational issues must be addressed, or your effort will be in vain.
However, it is possible, with good guidance, to attack the foundational issues as well as
the quantity control issues, simultaneously.

To Not Understand This Concept Is Dangerous
This concept alone, specifically that the TPS is built upon a strong foundation and that
one huge element of that foundation is high levels of delivered quality, is the reason
most companies fail while trying to implement a Lean initiative. I do not mean their
efforts yielded less than they had hoped for, I mean some downright failed.
For example, I got a call from a potential client who was trying to mimic the TPS.
They called me when their production rates flagged and on-time delivery had dropped
below survival levels. They described their efforts as a JIT Implementation. Over the
phone, it took me about two minutes to diagnose their problems. They had tried to
install a JIT system without the help of an expert. They had plunged headlong into an
inventory reduction effort to improve lead times but were burdened by two major
flaws. First, they had only a superficial understanding of the TPS. Thus, they had, in
effect, placed a high-powered rifle in the hands of a child. Second, even if they under-
stood the basics of JIT, their system was not able to undergo inventory reductions
without attacking the underlying and necessary foundational issues, principally the
reduction of process variation. Consequently, the JIT system exacerbated, rather than
solved, their problems. My advice to them was to hire an expert, immediately, to help
them. They said they did not have the resources to do that. My next best recommendation
was to undo what they had done and return to the method they previously had, so they
would at least survive. I am not sure exactly what they did, but I later learned that the
business had closed—and with it over 200 people lost their jobs.
Still others implement the TPS system and fail to achieve what the system is capable
of delivering. Quite simply, there are no shortcuts, and to that end, shortcuts of under-
standing are the most devastating. So if you want to embark on any initiative, make
sure you have both a thorough understanding of the initiative, as well as a commitment
to implementing it. (See the Five Tests of Management Commitment in Chap. 19.)

A Critical and Comparative Analysis of Various Philosophies
A number of philosophies exist—some of them still popular—that are an effort to
improve business. Most focus on manufacturing and are generally a response to the
success achieved by the Japanese in the automobile industry. In no particular order,
they are: