Page 291 - The Toyota Way Fieldbook

266 THE TOYOTA WAY FIELDBOOK

Following the principles of Job Instruction Training developed by TWI, there
must be a job breakdown of important tasks, key points, and reasons. This assumes
that prior to this there was a clear definition of the work, including standards for
the job. Second, there must be some preparation of the jobs to be demonstrated
to the trainee. Third, the trainee must have a supervised opportunity to try out the
performance. Fourth, they must perform the job with supervision and support.
Does this look anything like the way professionals in your company are
trained? Notice that Toyota does not assume that general education in univer-
sities creates trained professionals ready to perform their jobs. In fact, quite the
opposite: Toyota often assumes they will have to untrain some of the bad habits
learned prior to joining the company. Many of the assumptions and beliefs
about work taught in school may be contrary to the Toyota Way.
Let’s consider the example of developing a body design engineer (e.g., door
engineer) at Toyota, responsible for the engineering of steel body parts. The
design process begins with a styling design, which is the artistic rendering of
the appearance. This is converted to computer-aided-design data, then all the
structural components are designed and the work proceeds to die designers
and die makers, and the product is followed through to production.
1. Engineers are selected by a rigorous process similar to what we described
for hourly workers. In Japan they recruit from a few of the best universities
(e.g., Tokyo, Kyoto) and let alumni working for them do some of the screen-
ing. The interviews are equally important in the hiring process.
2. Engineers are hired as a collective class before being assigned to a specialty.
They go through one year of general orientation, which includes:
a. One month general orientation to the company.
b. Three to four months working in a Toyota plant performing manual
work (preferably building the part of the vehicle they are likely to be
engineering).
c. Two to three months selling cars at a dealer (to understand the cus-
tomer perspective).
d. Assignment to the work area.
e. A freshmen project in a work area (supervised project to get hands-on
engineering experience).
3. Two years of intensive, supervised, on-the-job training in the specialty.
Engineers do their own computer-aided-design, so they must learn the
system in this period.
4. A minimum of three years to become a first-grade engineer within their
subspecialty of body engineering (e.g., door engineer).
5. Aminimum of eight years of experience to be a senior engineer with respon-
sibility to lead others. At this point the engineer may be assigned to a
related specialty (e.g., bumpers).
6. About 10 to 12 years to be a staff leader.