Page 424 - The Toyota Way Fieldbook

Chapter 19. Lean Implementation Strategies and Tactics 397

Characteristics
Focused process improvement Toyota uses variety of approaches
Specific improvement targets Some companies use kaizen events
Isolated process improvements Some companies use Six Sigma process
Toyota drives with hoshin kanri

STRENGTHS TRAPS
• High interest/support • Point kaizen with no overall vision/strategy
• Resources usually available • No system to support lasting change
• Bias for action • Risk of back-sliding
• Kaizen event approach can make radical • Lacks ownership if driven by staff
changes quickly function
• Opportunity to convince skeptics in • Kaizen event approach can become“the
kaizen events lean program”
• Six Sigma approach uses very rigorous • Six Sigma can lead to analysis paralysis
statistical analysis • Typically projects look for an immediate
• Can support value stream approach payback which means labor costs giving
lean and Six Sigma the reputation as
head-cutting programs.

Figure 19-1. Strengths and traps of kaizen project approach

2. Management is enlightened on the speed with which things can be accom-
plished if a concerted effort is applied. Amazing things can be accomplished
with proper focus and leverage of resources.
3. People learn a great deal. The intensity of the experience opens people up
to learning in ways that are usually not possible in a traditional classroom
approach.
4. Resources are usually made available, including management authority,
cross-functional resources, and some money. So things can happen in the
week that might otherwise take months of written requests, approvals,
and cajoling people to help out.
5. Skeptics can be won over. In a classroom, the skeptics raise their hands
and explain all the reasons lean will not work. Those same people in a work-
shop are making it happen.
6. As we will discuss later in the chapter, the kaizen event is a great tool for
implementing aspects of an overall value stream vision.
The Tenneco example from Smithville, Tennessee, which we describe below,
illustrates the positive and negative of kaizen events. In that case, radical kaizen
events every other week dramatically turned around a plant. About 40 percent of
the workforce were “kaizened out.” Within one year they worked through every
area of the plant, moving hundreds of pieces of equipment, making new shipping