What do you say after, “Lean is based on the Toyota Production System”?

“Curmudge, it’s pretty hard to say that you are a ‘chip off the old block’ when your father has just been accused of poor behavior.”

“It’s almost that bad, Jaded Julie, when one considers Lean’s familial tie to the TPS. Historically, when we explained Lean by referring to Toyota, the listener knew immediately that Lean had something to do with high quality. Now, with Toyota’s recalls and sudden acceleration issues, the listener thinks about quality problems.”

“So how does one avoid mentioning Toyota?”

“Just focus on Lean. It has been used successfully in the U.S. in manufacturing and health care for several years. Talk about respect for people, reduction of waste, and no-layoff policy (using the employer’s approved wording). Until Toyota’s quality problems are resolved, it might be prudent not to emphasize its role in the origin of our culture.”

“But, Curmudge, what if the questioner already knows about the connection between Lean and Toyota?”

“I guess we have to explain things as best we can. Every culture—and religion—has backsliders, and some people say that’s what happened at Toyota. Of course, it’s pretty unusual for the originator of the culture to be an apostate.”

“(Apostate? Knowing Curmudge, that’s got to be just a fancy word for ‘backslider.’) Have any experts with intimate knowledge of Toyota addressed this situation? It would be really helpful to be able to answer an inquisitor by sharing the insights of recognized Lean authorities.”

“John Shook’s Lean management column provides several valuable discussions with acknowledged leaders in the Lean fraternity. The comments by Robert Cole were quite critical of Toyota. In 1998 the president of Toyota challenged his managers to double their global market share by 2010. Although it was not his intent, the Toyota president ‘underestimated the way his directive got transmuted as it traveled through the organization. Toyota managers became so busy pressing their suppliers to increase capacity that they became less interested in listening to supplier concerns about what such rapid capacity expansion might do to quality.’”

“In simple terms, Curmudge, it seems as if the Toyota managers strayed from their traditional quality focus and lost their way. Did Professor Cole propose an explanation for this behavior?”

“He did, Julie, and it’s a valuable lesson for all of us. ‘The focus (at Toyota) on hyper-growth led to a growing divergence between its culture and its incentive system. Under these conditions, culture always loses.’”

“I suspect that most everyone attributes Toyota’s situation to some aspect of their rapid growth.”

“Right, Julie, but Jeff Liker is a bit more forgiving. ‘I think this (dilution of the Toyota Way) was inevitable as the company globalized, lost most of the original generation, and took on hundreds of thousands of outside people.’ ‘I am not so sure that Toyota lost its way as much as they have been struggling to grow up.’”

“What about Japanese experts? Did any of them weigh in with a different view?”

“Professor Takahiro Fujimoto spoke of the ‘Demons of Complexity.’ ‘The governments of developed countries have imposed strict regulations governing safety, emissions, fuel consumption, and so on. Meanwhile, the requirements of customers have also grown more stringent.’ ‘(The vehicles) contain software with more than 10 million lines of code.’ ‘If there is one primary reason for the crisis, it is that this overwhelming complexity exceeded Toyota’s organizational capability.’”

“At least from the technical standpoint, John Shook provided an encouraging word. ‘If any company can get to the bottom of an issue like this, a problem like this, it’s Toyota.’ So, Curmudge, what might be the fate of Toyota here in the United States?”

“Japanese executives doing hansei (reflection) before a congressional committee or in a U.S. courtroom probably won’t cut it. In short, I suspect that Toyota is in a peck of legal trouble that might ultimately spill over into the whole auto industry. The paradigm (prevailing view) of highway safety might shift from asking, ‘What did the driver do wrong?’ to ‘What did the car manufacturer do wrong?’ At least for the moment, we would do well to forget that the TPS was the progenitor of our Lean culture. So after our discussion, Jaded Julie, do you know the real origin of Lean at Affinity?”

“I certainly do. Gary invented it.”

Affinity’s Kaizen Curmudgeon