How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers

Topic: Management Improvement

How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers, Sarah Jane Johnston interview of Steven Spear.

It is our conclusion that Toyota has developed a set of principles, Rules-in-Use we've called them, that allow organizations to engage in this (self-reflective) design, testing, and improvement so that (nearly) everyone can contribute at or near his or her potential, and when the parts come together the whole is much, much greater than the sum of the parts.

The main difficulty is not a knowledge gap, but a performance gap. Most of what Toyota does has been published in numerous books (The Toyota Way, The Machine That Changed the World...) and articles (see see Curious Cat links to books and articles on Toyota's management ideas). Reading that information is wise, but that is the easy part. The difficult part is actually managing more effectively. Some of the concepts can be difficult to accept but they really are not too difficult to understand.

We've observed that Toyota, its best suppliers, and other companies that have learned well from Toyota can confidently distribute a tremendous amount of responsibility to the people who actually do the work, from the most senior, expeirenced [sic] member of the organization to the most junior. This is accomplished because of the tremendous emphasis on teaching everyone how to be a skillful problem solver.

This idea is simple. Creating an environment where this is actual the way things are, not just the way things are said to be, is difficult. That is why I believe so strongly in Deming's management philosophy. The organization must be viewed as a whole. Benefits can be gained by adopting some concepts in a piecemeal manner. However, many benefits accrue only when the positive interactions between Toyota Production System (TPS - Lean) concepts occur (as systems thinking would predict).

I'm fundamentally an empiricist, so I have to go back to what we have observed. In organizations in which managers really live by these Rules, either in the Toyota system or at sites that have successfully transformed themselves, there is a palpable, positive difference in the attitude of people that is coupled with exceptional performance along critical business measures such as quality, cost, safety, and cycle time.

Operational Definitions and Data Collection

Topic: Management Improvement

Americans' Dirty Secret Revealed by Bjorn Carey
See also: Google News on washing hands - Soap and Detergent Association press release

A study released recently spawned a flurry of articles on washing hands. I have seen such reporting before and again I find it interesting (as sad as that might be). The stories repeatedly say things like: "Men's hands dirtier than women's." The study actual was focused on the percentage of people who washed their hands. While there is likely a correlation, making such leaps in reporting data is not wise. This example is often found in the data used in organizations. Where interpretations of the data are given as the facts instead of the data itself. However that is not what I find most interesting.

Instead I find the lack of operational definition interesting. In many of the articles they have quotes like:

In a recent telephone survey, 91 percent of the subjects claimed they always washed their hands after using public restrooms. But, when researchers observed people leaving public restrooms, only 83 percent actually did so.

Only 75 percent of men washed their hands compared to 90 percent of women, the observations revealed.

A few of the links contain something similar to: "Yesterday's results come from the American Society of Microbiology's latest look at how many people take what is considered the single easiest step to staying healthy: spending 20 seconds rubbing with soap under the faucet." from the Winston Salem Journal.

This leads me to suspect that "washing your hands" might not be operationally defined as running your hands under the water but instead using soap and water for something close to 20 seconds but even in sources explaining the methodology they don't describe what is considered "washing your hands." I have asked them what was considered "washing your hands."

I have emailed to see if I can get a clearer idea of what the operational definition was. I'll update this if I get additional details.

When collecting and reporting data it is important to include the operational definitions associated with that data.

Links: Center for Disease Control Clean Hands Save Lives "Handwashing is one of the most important things you can do to keep from getting sick and from spreading germs to others."

Googlebombing

Topic: Internet - Google

The Google blog has a new post on: Googlebombing 'failure'

Basically they explain that Google is not making a judgment that the result top results for "failure" represent Google's opinion of who is a failure. The top result is the Biography of President George W. Bush on the whitehouse.gov web site, and the second result is Michael Moore's home page.

As Google explains:

By using a practice called googlebombing, however, determined pranksters can occasionally produce odd results. In this case, a number of webmasters use the phrases [failure] and [miserable failure] to describe and link to President Bush's website, thus pushing it to the top of searches for those phrases.

That explanation makes sense.

We don't condone the practice of googlebombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results, but we're also reluctant to alter our results by hand in order to prevent such items from showing up.

I think here their post gets a bit tricky. I think it makes sense that they say they don't condone "the practice of googlebombing" but exactly what the difference between that and the "collective wisdom" of the web that they tap to determine what words people use to link to a web page is tough to say. If a bunch of web authors think the photos of Olympic National Park on our web site are worthy of linking to that is exactly the type of information Google takes advantage of to provide relevant search results.

Many web authors do provide links because they believe the site they link to is of value and hope others go to that site. For example, Trickle Up is a great charity for providing opportunity to those with limited resources. Google wants to take advantage of that link as one very small factor in providing search results.

How you decide when the words an author uses to link to a page are worthy of consideration by Google's algorithms and when the words are pranks would be a difficult task. Google does have to take into account that this type of effort (targeted text in links to a page) is exactly what SEO efforts focus on, and I am sure Google takes steps to limit the bad effects (on search results) that those efforts can have. These "failure" examples are just temporary cases that will fade over time (I believe). Probably due to the wide spread viral like nature of the links, they are not as easy to identify and block with algorithm tuning.

So I think they are right when they conclude with the less than definitive:

Pranks like this may be distracting to some, but they don't affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission.

At what point opinions of web authors become a prank, is difficult to judge, in my opinion.

25 New MacArthur Fellows

25 New MacArthur Fellows Announced
press release
overview of fellows

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation today named 25 new MacArthur Fellows for 2005. Each received a phone call from the Foundation this week informing them that they will be given $500,000 in '“no strings attached' support over the next five years.

I think the fellowships are a great idea: give money to people who have done excellent work. I am not sure of the motivations of the MacArthur Foundation, but if it were me I would trust by providing funds to those people they would (as a group, not every single person) take advantage of those funds to create great advances for all of humanity.

As I have mentioned before I also like, Trickle Up. While different in actual, to me there is a similarity: money is given that provides opportunity that I trust will make for a better world. The fellowship site does mention: "unrestricted fellowships to individuals across all ages and fields who show exceptional merit and promise of continued creative work" which indicates they do expect conduit creative work even though the fellowship is unrestricted.

It is great to see examples of those doing work worthy of such high praise.

Healthcare Costs Spike Again

Healthcare Costs Spike Again by Jeanne Sahadi, CNN/Money:

The premium growth rate this year – 9.2 percent – outpaced by miles both the growth in wages (2.7 percent) and inflation (3.5 percent)
...
since 2000 premiums for family coverage have gone up 73 percent. During the same period, wages rose just 15 percent.

This is not sustainable. I feel like Brad Setser talking about the USA trade deficiets (by the way if you have any interest in economics, or international trade, or investing you really should read his economics blog - it is great). Deming noted excessive health care costsas a deadly disease to the American economy and the news just gets year after year. This system is obviously broken and in need of fundemental change.

Related Health Care posts:

• Saving Lives: US Heath Care Improvement
• Going Lean in Health Care
• Using Design to Reduce Medical Error
  

Health Care improvement articles and studies via the Curious Cat Management Improvement Library.

Edson Puts The Squeeze On Waste

Edson Puts The Squeeze On Waste by Ron Richardson

"One of our wrong, old core beliefs was that inventory is good," says Hattin. "We thought it provided rapid availability to parts and allowed us to get to work quicker. That was the first sacred cow sacrificed on the altar of Lean management." He says there were some veteran employees who felt "a good deal of pain" when the old way of operating was tossed out.

"Our mantra now is unless we have an order for it, we don't build it. That and some multi-skilled plant people - for which we pay them extra for the additional skills have made us more effective."

Accepting lean ideas is not always easy. Lean thinking requires a new way of viewing the world. The system must change for the methods to work.

In doing its own thing, Edson scrapped a computer-based kanban system in favor of its manual set up because, as Hattin explains,"it's self-managed and provides quick visibility on the tasks on hand. "The investment was reasonable - about $78 for a peg board and color cards. The best thing about it is that everyone can see what's going on in about 10 seconds and knows what the next job is."

Advanced technology is great, but as a hammer is not always the best tool, similarly the most technologically sophisticated solution is not always the best solution.

Measurement and Data Collection

Topic: Management improvement

This is my response to the Deming Electronic Network message (removed broken link) on measurement.

I find it useful, to assure that data collection is a wise use of resources, to ask what will be done with the results. If you don't have an answer for how you will use the data, once you get it, then you probably shouldn't waste resources collecting it (and I find there is frequently no plan for using the results).

I have found it helpful to ask: what will you do if the data we collect is 30? What will you do if it is 3? The answer does not need to be some formula, if 30 then x. But rather that the results would be used to help inform a decision process to make improvements (possibly the decision to focus resources in that area). I find, that asking that question often helps reach a better understanding of what data is actually needed, so you then collect better data.

I believe, it is better to focus on less data, really focus on it. My father, Bill Hunter, and Brain Joiner, believed in the value of actually plotting the data yourself by hand. In this day and age that is almost never done (especially in an office environment). I think doing so does add value. For one thing, it makes you select the vital few important measures to your job.

But it is very difficult for anyone to actual suggest plotting data by hand: they must be very secure in their reputation (or maybe a bit crazy), because it seems to be a hopelessly outdated idea that paints you as the same. My appeal, within the Deming context, is that the psychology of plotting the points yourself is qualitatively different from letting the computer do it. Plotting the data yourself serves to lift the data that you plot out of the sea of data that we find ourselves inundated with and gives you a deeper connection to it. You would not plot all the data that you use by hand; just the most important items.


John Hunter
Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections

North Cascades National Park Photos

Topic: Travel Photos

I finally have posted photos from my June 2005 trip to North Cascades National Park. See more photos from the same trip: Mount Saint Helens, Olympic National Park, North Cascade National Park. Photos from other trips: Curious Cat Travel Photos.