Taiichi Ohnos Workplace Management: Special 100th Birthday Edition - Hardcover

Ohno, Taiichi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071808019 ISBN 13: 9780071808019

Publisher: McGraw Hill, 2012

Synopsis

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COMMEMORATING THE 100th BIRTHDAY OF TAIICHI OHNO

Businesses worldwide are successfully implementing the Toyota Production System to speed up processes, reduce waste, improve quality, and cut costs. While there iswidespread adoption of TPS, there is still much to be learned about its fundamental principles.

This unique volume delivers a clear, concise overview of the Toyota Production System and kaizen in the verywords of the architect of both of these movements, Taiicho Ohno, published to mark what would have been his 100thbirthday. Filled with insightful new commentary from global quality visionaries, Taiichi Ohno’s Workplace Management is a classic that shows how Toyota managerswere taught to think.

Based on a series of interviews with Ohno himself, this timeless work is a tribute to his genius and to the corevalues that have made, and continue to make, Toyota one of the most successful manufacturers in the world.

"Whatever name you may give our system, there are parts of it that are so far removed from generally acceptedideas (common sense) that if you do it only half way, it can actually make things worse."

"If you are going to do TPS you must do it all the way. You also need to change the way you think. You need to change how you look at things." -- Taiichi Ohno

"This book brings to us Taiichi Ohno's philosophy of workplace management--the thinking behind the Toyota Production System. I personally get a thrill down my spine to read these thoughts in Ohno’s own words." -- Dr. Jeffrey Liker, Director, Japan Technology Management Program, University of Michigan, and Author, The Toyota Way

Based on a series of interviews with Taiicho Ohno, this unique volume delivers a clear, concise overview of the Toyota Production System and kaizen in the very words of the architect of both of these movements, published to mark what would have been his 100th birthday.

INCLUDES INSIGHTFUL NEW COMMENTARY FROM:
Fujio Cho, Chairman of Toyota Corporation
Masaaki Imai, Founder of the Kaizen Institute
Dr. Jeffrey Liker, Director, Japan TechnologyManagement Program, University of Michigan, and author
John Shook, Chairman and CEO of the Lean Enterprise Institute
Bob Emiliani, Professor, School of Engineering andTechnology, Connecticut State University
Jon Miller, CEO of the Kaizen Institute

About this title

About the Author

Taiichi Ohno was born in Dalian, China, on February 29, 1912. He joined Toyoda Boshoku in 1932 after graduating from the mechanical engineering department of Nagoya Technical High School. Mr. Ohno was transferred toToyota Motor Company in 1943 and was named the machine shop manager in 1949. He was promoted at Toyota to director in 1954, managing director in 1964, senior managing director in 1970, and executive vice president in 1975. He retired from Toyota in 1978. Mr. Ohno is the father of the Toyota Production System. He authored three works: Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production, Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management, and Just-in-Time for Today and Tomorrow with Setsuo Mito.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Taiichi Ohnos Workplace Management

Special 100th Birthday Edition

By Taiichi Ohno

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-07-180801-9

Contents

Foreword by Fujio Cho
Preface by Taiichi Ohno
CHAPTER 1 The Wise Mend Their Ways
CHAPTER 2 If You Are Wrong, Admit It
CHAPTER 3 Misconceptions Reduce Efficiency
CHAPTER 4 Confirm Failures with Your Own Eyes
CHAPTER 5 Misconceptions Hidden within Common Sense
CHAPTER 6 The Blind Spot in Mathematical Calculations
CHAPTER 7 Don't Fear Opportunity Losses
CHAPTER 8 Limited Volume Production Is to Produce at a Low Cost
CHAPTER 9 Reduced Inventory, Increased Work in Process
CHAPTER 10 The Misconception That Mass Production Is Cheaper
CHAPTER 11 Wasted Motion Is Not Work
CHAPTER 12 Agricultural People Like Inventory
CHAPTER 13 Improve Productivity Even with Reduced Volumes
CHAPTER 14 Do Kaizen When Times Are Good
CHAPTER 15 Just in Time
CHAPTER 16 Old Man Sakichi Toyoda's Jidoka Idea
CHAPTER 17 The Goal Was Ten-fold Higher Productivity
CHAPTER 18 The Supermarket System
CHAPTER 19 Toyota Made the Kanban System Possible
CHAPTER 20 We Learned Forging Changeover at Toyota do Brasil
CHAPTER 21 "Rationalization" Is to Do What Is Rational
CHAPTER 22 Shut the Machines Off!
CHAPTER 23 How to Produce at a Lower Cost
CHAPTER 24 Fight the Robot Fad
CHAPTER 25 Work Is a Competition of Wits with Subordinates
CHAPTER 26 There Are No Supervisors at the Administrative Gemba
CHAPTER 27 We Can Still Do a Lot More Kaizen
CHAPTER 28 Wits Don't Work Until You Feel the Squeeze
CHAPTER 29 Become a Reliable Boss
CHAPTER 30 Sort, Set in Order, Sweep, Sanitize
CHAPTER 31 There Is a Correct Sequence to Kaizen
CHAPTER 32 Operational Availability vs. Rate of Operation
CHAPTER 33 The Difference between Production Engineering and Manufacturing 
Engineering
CHAPTER 34 The Pitfall of Cost Calculation
CHAPTER 35 The Monaka System
CHAPTER 36 Only the Gemba Can Do Cost Reduction
CHAPTER 37 Follow the Decisions That Were Made
CHAPTER 38 The Standard Time Should Be the Shortest Time
Afterword
About the Author
Seeking What Taiichi Ohno Sought by Jon Miller
Ohno's Insights on Human Nature by Bob Emiliani
A Revolution in Consciousness by John Shook
Taiichi Ohno as Master Trainer by Jeffrey Liker
Reflections on the Centenary of Taiichi Ohno by Masaaki Imai
Selected Sayings of Taiichi Ohno
A Note on Translation from Japanese to English
Index
About Kaizen Institute
Worldwide Contact Information for Kaizen Institute Consulting Group

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Wise Mend Their Ways

I have been asked to talk about the theme of "management of the gemba," andsince I am not confident that I will be able to do this systematically, I willtalk about related matters as they occur to me.

I don't think that the gemba changes easily. If the gemba changed easily, thiswould be very easy, but the gemba is not such a place. It is important forpeople to understand and agree, and it is important for us to persuade them.

In order to explain and gain the agreement of many people, you need to have somebasis for your arguments. When I give talks I am often asked about how todevelop one's powers of persuasion. But if you are in a position to giveinstructions or give orders, you cannot do this unless you have a lot ofconfidence about what you are saying.

However, people's ideas are unreliable things, and I would be impressed if wewere right even half of the time.

There is a proverb: "Even a thief is right three times out of ten."

If it's true that even a thief will say three right things, then I think weshould expect that a normal person is right half of the time but wrong the otherhalf of the time.

When I was a middle school student in the old system, we studied the Chineseclassics, and during this class we learned from the Analects of Confucius. Inthese writings Confucius says, "The wise will mend their ways" and "The wise manshould not hesitate to correct themselves." I think the term "wise man" mustrefer to a remarkable person, and I am sure that more than half of what such aperson said was right, but even then they probably were wrong 30 percent or 40percent of the time.

I think these words in the Analects mean that even the wise man is not right tenout of ten times, and when you know you are wrong you should mend your ways andnot hesitate to correct yourself.

A thief may say good things three times out of ten; a regular person may getfive things right and five things wrong. Even a wise man probably is right seventimes out of ten, but must be wrong three times out of ten, so if you are wrongdon't hesitate to correct yourself.

Confucius is saying that we should change gracefully, like a leopard. I thinkhis words mean that in the end it is not good if you hold on to your ideas toostrongly and try stubbornly to justify them.

There is another saying: "The morning's orders are revised in the afternoon." Ifmy memory is correct, we were taught that it is a bad thing to give orders orinstructions in the morning and then change them in the afternoon, but I thinkthat as long as "the wise mend their ways" and "the wise man should not hesitateto correct himself," then we must understand this to mean that we should, infact, revise the morning's orders in the afternoon.

However, this does not mean that you give ambiguous orders or instructions youare not confident about in the morning and then change these orders without evengoing to see the results. If you are giving orders, or if you have given anorder, and you see by the result that you were wrong, or that circumstances havechanged, making your orders bad, you should not wait until the afternoon tochange these orders. Why not revise the morning's orders in the morning? What isnecessary is the attitude that if the morning's orders were bad they should bechanged by noon at the latest. From this point of view there are countries thatpass regulations and laws and do not change them.

I encounter these from time to time and think, "I can't believe such laws stillexist."

There may be many countries that believe that it is bad if "the morning's ordersare revised in the afternoon" and leave the same laws on the books for manyyears, and I am sure this is true even locally. This does not mean thatcompanies should also stick stubbornly to old ways and blindly followestablished authority.

Engineers, in particular, tend to hold on tightly to things they have said or totheir ideas. Engineers are often said to be inflexible or stubborn, but I thinkit is important for them to quickly correct themselves, just as the wise mendtheir ways. If you think, "What I said was mistaken," you should clearly say, "Iwas wrong." Without this sort of attitude your subordinates and the people onthe gemba will not do things for you. If you realize that people will makemistakes and have a frank attitude to the point of thinking it is normal toapologize and say that you were wrong even to your subordinates, this will havean effect on how persuasive you can be.

If you fear the other person, or if you do not understand why, and you just keepgoing ahead, knowing you are wrong but doing nothing about it, you will not knowwhat is really wrong. This has a negative influence over time. It becomesawkward to change the order you gave and so you leave it alone. As a result,people stop following you.

We are all human and we are wrong half of the time. You may give the wrongorders to your subordinates. Since we are all human, half of what yoursubordinates have to say may be right. Unless managers first take this attitude,people will turn away from us.

So in the end, having a sense of humility is one of the conditions fordeveloping strong powers of persuasion.

CHAPTER 2

If You Are Wrong, Admit It

This raises the question of why we are wrong half of the time. This may bebecause even when we say something with a lot of confidence, many times ourfundamental way of thinking is wrong.

In Japan, we have a word, sakkaku, which is very appropriate. I think theoptical illusion, or the misconception of what we can see, is easy tounderstand. For example, in the following diagram, if the two lines of equallength are made into a "T" everyone sees that the horizontal line looks shorterthan the vertical line. This is a common method for making a most basicexplanation of misconceptions. You can make mistakes when you think "this one islonger" because it looks longer.

However, we cannot help the fact that it looks longer to us. In these situationswe have to take apart the "T" shape and arrange the two lines next to eachother, and we will see that they are the same length. So, even though one linelooks longer, in fact it is not longer.

The misconception of an optical illusion is very easy to explain, and people areeasily persuaded.

The question then becomes, "How long should it look for the lines to be the samelength?" or "How long should it look for the line to be longer?" This is notsomething that we can judge by sight alone, and again we need to arrange the twolines next to each other for comparison.

There are so many things in this world that we cannot know until we trysomething. Very often after we try we find that the results are completely theopposite of what we expected, and this is because having misconceptions is partof what it means to be human. While it is easy to persuade people by trying outthe optical illusion, it is difficult to prove that the ideas in your mind andthe thoughts in your brain are, in fact, misconceptions. In many cases when aperson has an idea or makes a statement that they believe is correct, they findthat it was a misconception. When you try your ideas the results can be contraryto your expectations.

As long as humans have their misconceptions, we are lucky if we give ten ordersand half of them are correct. I think Confucius was able to say, "The wiseshould not hesitate to correct themselves" because he knew that we make mistakeshalf of the time.

People who hold the misconception in their head that one line is longer will noteasily understand if you tell them the two lines are the same length. They justhave to try it. Once they try it and verify the results with their own eyes,they will realize that the orders that they gave, believing they were right,were in fact wrong. They will also make the workers try many different things tohelp them understand misconceptions on their own.

When making people try things, it is important for the person who gave theinstruction to go see the results with their own eyes. When verifying with yourown eyes, if you see that it was not a misconception but was in fact true, andyou can say, "I was wrong," on the spot, people will think, "He is my boss buthe apologized to me when he was wrong."

As a result when you have another idea and you instruct them to try it out theywill do so willingly.

If you are wrong and you show by your facial expression, "Well, I'll be danged,"this will become a form of encouragement to them. As they try ten differentthings and they see that five of things you ask them to do are correct, I thinkthey will become very cooperative.

On the other hand, if you insist stubbornly that the boss's orders should befollowed, whether they are good orders or bad orders, people will stop followingyou. On the question of persuasion, when both the person giving the orders andthe person being ordered recognize that as humans we are only right half of thetime, we can say, "What did I tell you?" to the other when they wrong, and justthis feeling of openness makes the person you are trying to persuade feelbetter. As a result, they will become more willing to cooperate. I think this isthe true power of persuasion.

If people did not have misconceptions, there would be no need for persuasion.Because we fall into misconceptions due to ideas in our heads, persuasion can bedifficult. Perhaps the more that a person is an intellectual the more they areprone to misconceptions.

CHAPTER 3

Misconceptions Reduce Efficiency

On the gemba, as I just mentioned, it is important to just try it. For instance,I am sure this is something you find everywhere, but people think that doing onetype of work all at once is faster. When I tell people, "Do one piece at atime," they say that this will lower efficiency. They think that efficiency isimproved—in other words, that productivity is improved—by producingthe same thing over and over.

I was observing a young woman performing an inspection process, and she wasarranging many parts in a row and checking them. No matter how much I told herthat instead of doing it her way it was much easier and much more efficient toinspect and put them in a box one at a time she would say, "No, this way isfaster."

In these situations, I say, "All right, that's okay, but try it my way one at atime." When people try it, they find it is too boring. They think maybe theywill not be able to make their numbers this way. However, after they try thisfor a whole day, they find that what used to require overtime to complete 5,000pieces can now be done one at a time every 20 seconds, in regular hours. Itseems they cannot believe that they can get more done with such a slow pace ofwork.

When they work on many pieces at once, taking 20 or 30 pieces in one hand andarranging them neatly in rows, they have the misconception that they can getmore work done. Again, we make them try working on one piece at a time. They maythink, "This is not real work; this is play." As a result of working like it wasplay and finishing work in regular hours, the worker does not work overtime andtheir income is reduced. If their argument is that doing many at once is betterbecause of their finances, I can't argue with that.... When working one piece at atime you can work at a leisurely pace that does not make you tired and you canmake the same volume without overtime. They understand this when they try it.All of this is relatively simple. However, the reality is that this simple thingis not actually done on the gemba.

This is an old story from the Toyota Motor Company, right after World War II. Atthe process for drilling holes in round bar stock, the worker wanted to onlydrill holes. The daily requirement was 80 pieces, so the young worker wasdrilling the holes by manual feed. "Why is he operating the machine by manualfeed?" I wondered.

The worker explained that on automatic feed the machine would keep going evenafter the cutting tool became dull and did not cut so well, and this caused thecutting tool to break or the dimension of the hole to be wrong. By operating themachine on manual feed the worker could tell how the tool was cutting. "So thisway is faster," he said.

When I asked, "How long does it take to make the hole?" he replied "Thirtyseconds." "So," I said, "if you can make a hole in 30 seconds, you can make twoholes in one minute." The worker had nothing to say to this. The reason is thatthis job was done over seven hours of working time. The worker was proudlysaying that he made 80 parts in seven hours. He was saying that he was operatingthe machine by hand and doing his best to make 80 parts in a day, as required.

Since there are 60 minutes in one hour, next I said, "You can make 120 holes inone hour." He did not reply because while he was proud of making 80 parts in aday, if it was possible to make 120 parts in one hour, this was troubling newsto him. This is why he did not respond when I said, "You can make 120 holes inone hour." The message was, "Why do you only make 80 parts in seven hours? Ifyou need 80 parts it should take you 40 minutes. This means you are only working40 minutes in one day."

"I'm working diligently and doing what is needed. Why do you complain?" he askedme.

I said to him, "Son, you may be diligently working up a sweat but you are onlymaking 80 parts in seven hours. If you are going to come to work, give us atleast one hour of work per day."

"Give me a break," he said.

When you think about this, it may seem that making holes at the fastest speedyou can by hand is the faster way. Making a hole using automatic feed takes 40seconds. Making a hole by manual feed takes 30 seconds. So it seems that manualfeed is more efficient. But after making three holes in a row, one afteranother, with the manual method, the tip of the drill gets hot, and this makesit dull. This causes it to cut not as well. The worker takes the cutting toolover to the grinder to sharpen the cutting tool, and then back to make threemore holes. The cutting tool gets hot again after two or three holes, and theworker has to go back to the grinder to sharpen the tool. He thinks he isworking.

He thinks that if he works diligently he can make one hole in 30 seconds. He hasthe misconception that doing the same task over and over again raisesefficiency.

However, if you use the automatic feed and you only need 80 parts per day, youonly need to make one hole every five or ten minutes.

The appropriate cutting speed is 40 seconds per hole. You can make a hole in 40seconds and then let the cutting tool cool for four minutes and 20 seconds sothat the cutting tool will return to room temperature when it is needed again tomake the next part. You can also apply cutting fluid to the tool to lower thetemperature to that of the coolant, and then you can use the same cutting toolto make 30 to 50 holes before needing to sharpen it again.

Each worker did not have their own whetstone. Five or six people lined up beforethe whetstone waiting to use it. Everyone was working in the same way. Forexample, the lathe was used to cut parts as fast as the cutting tool wouldallow. This dulled the cutting tool, and the lathe operators lined up to sharpentheir tools. There were always five or six people in queue before the whetstone.So even if they could sharpen a tool in 30 seconds, if they were at the end ofthe queue of five or six people and each sharpened their tools, it took tenminutes before they got back to their machine. If a worker found that he did notsharpen the tool well and had to go back again, he might only make two parts inten minutes.

The old drill presses had a small table, so if a worker tried to make many partsat once he would need to take 10 or 15 pieces of material out of the box to putthem on the table of the drill press.

Then he moved 10 or 20 finished parts to the side and into a basket.

Again, he took 10 or 20 pieces from one basket and lined them up on the table.The person doing all of this thought he was working. As a result he could onlymake three or four pieces every ten minutes, and yet he thought that he wasdoing a good job because he could make a hole every 30 seconds, while it took 40seconds on automatic feed. "And I am sharpening my own tools," he thought.

If a worker only needed one part every five minutes they could have let thecutting tool cool down for four minutes and only have gone to sharpen tools onceper day, and yet they went to sharpen tools every three parts. Although theythought that they were skilled workers efficiently working up a sweat, in fact,this was a very inefficient way of working.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Taiichi Ohnos Workplace Management by Taiichi Ohno. Copyright © 2013 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc..
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Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw Hill
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0071808019
• ISBN 13: 9780071808019
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208