Page 454 - The Toyota Way Fieldbook

424 THE TOYOTA WAY FIELDBOOK

Lean implementation is a learning journey, even in advanced stages. Every
experience is an opportunity to learn and grow. But you have to take the time
to check and then think about what actions will improve on what you’ve
already done. We’ve heard statements like the following when preaching this
learning perspective: “But we are in business to make money. This is the real
world.”
Toyota is making lots of money. But it took decades of work to get to the
point where they benefited from early investments in learning. When we give
this advice—to make the necessary investment—it’s obvious to us that there’s
waste everywhere and the company can benefit from better quality, shorter lead
times, more flexibility to respond to change, and increased productivity.
Making some up-front investments in learning will greatly multiply long-term
savings. Remember in the 4P pyramid, the base is “thinking long term, even at
the expense of short-term financial considerations.” Organizations that view
lean as a short-term cost-cutting program are never going to achieve what is
possible. They will never become high-performing organizations.
Many companies are anxious to spread lean quickly to the enterprise and
extended enterprise levels. Simple analysis will show that most of the costs are
typically in supplied parts. And it is well known that the impact of upstream
processes like product development have multiplier effects on manufacturing
that are far greater than the investment in product development. So why not
start in those areas right away? Our experience is that starting enterprisewide
and extra-enterprise level programs prematurely does more harm than good.
There are a number of reasons for this:

1. Lean is easier to see in physical operations. Remember that much of
the early stages of lean are about learning. It is also, unfortunately,
about politics—selling the decision makers who hold the purse strings
by getting visible, measurable results. This is easiest to do in routine
physical processes. In pure service organizations it’s easiest in the
most routine parts of the business, for example, order entry, or the test
labs in a hospital.
2. There is a risk of overtaxing resources. Management is likely to assign
only so many people to lean. Focus on those from whom you’ll get the
best results and learning. Even if a separate staff is assigned to a “lean
office,” they’re better off first spending some time in the trenches work-
ing on the core value-adding operation. They will start to understand
lean at a deeper level, and much of that learning will transfer to the office
environment.
3. Lean service operations should support the core value-adding opera-
tions. You can lean out a support function by making it more efficient,