INVENTING A ‘NEED’ FOR CHANGE There are many references to ‘creating a need’ in books and articles about lean, yet most fail to adequately explain what this means, and more importantly how to achieve it. There is far more to Toyota’s approach than the staged introduction of tools. They are used but in a very methodical way. Put simply, Toyota is good at identifying, or creating, a ‘need’ within the organisation. This can be any natural business need that the plant must respond to; such as shifting customer demands necessitating a change to the takt time, new/facelifted model launches or cost reduction activities aimed at increasing profitability, etc. Those ‘needs’ are universal to the automotive industry. But on top of such natural business needs and demands, Toyota has mastered the art of creating, or inventing, crisis and thereby a need for change that provides the environment that shapes the development of e.g. a new plant. Such crises stretch the organisation, at which point a new tool is offered as part of the solution. Toyota is currently the largest and (by far) most ‘cash rich’ automotive manufacturer in the world. Yet, there is an almost constant feeling of crisis within the company. This feeling creates a strong ‘pull’ on internal coaching and tools. People inherently welcome anything that helps them solve a crisis. So, the tools are more quickly adopted and ‘absorbed’ into the culture of a plant in crisis mode. This is in contrast to many lean implementations, where new tools are ‘pushed’ onto an unconvinced and unwilling workforce, who without the driving force of a crisis, simply have no ‘need’ to use them. USE OF TOOLS I began working at the Toyota Burnaston facility before the start of production and received first-hand experience of the approach they use. Many of the so-called ‘soft skills’ methods used by Toyota are covered only briefly in the various texts available on both lean and Toyota. They mainly focus on the tools and techniques used by Toyota and interestingly often in greater depth than in Toyota’s own internal material. However, these tools and techniques are only a small part of Toyota’s successful approach, and they are used in a rather unique way, as shown in Fig 1. Culture can be defined as ‘collective behaviour’. As humans, we think before we act, so to influence behaviour, we must first influence thinking. The coach uses a TPS1 tool primarily to influence the ‘thinking way’ of the person being coached. Once this cycle has been completed, a slightly more sophisticated tool can be introduced to enhance the thinking further and so on. The operational impact of the TPS tool is of secondary interest to its effect on the thinking and behaviour of those being coached. FIGURE 1 TOOLS ING THINK WAY R CULTU E COACHING B E H A VIO U R The Toyota Production System (TPS) is an integrated system, developed by Toyota that comprises its management philosophy and practices. The TPS organises manufacturing and logistics for the automobile manufacturer, including interaction with suppliers and customers. The system is a major precursor of the more generic “lean manufacturing.” 1 1
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