The Toyota Way

Last year I participated in a book study group for The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer by Jeffrey K. Liker. The book covers the management philosophy that is deeply ingrained in the Toyota culture. I knew about Lean Manufacturing before reading the book, but thought it was mainly a bunch of techniques to maximize efficiency. I have heard many people over the years complain about it in the context of manufacturing environments, especially how it forces them to do things that don’t seem based in common sense like throwing away all scrap or spare parts that could be reused. I’ve also heard disaster stories about how companies have been trying to apply the techniques in non manufacturing settings like for office work.

It’s obvious after reading the book why so many attempts at implementing lean in the U.S. have failed. Lean is not a set of techniques or procedures, but a different way of thinking. It emphasizes focus on long term thinking, not the results for next quarter, or even next year, but decades into the future. It emphasizes doing things in a way that quickly exposes problems so that they can be solved. In the short term this will actually end up being less efficient, because problems can be covered up or fixed with band aids. It became obvious to me after the first few chapters that if this long term focus was missing, nothing would ultimately be gained by using the techniques (maybe some short term gains, but eventually these would evaporate).

The principles have nothing to do with the type of work being performed, either routine manufacturing tasks, creative engineering tasks, or any other human work. Following these principles will lead to continuous improvement, and eventually excellence. In fact, it will lead to preservation of the firm even when faced with major changes in technology, conditions, or environment. For example, I was very surprised to learn that Toyota started out making looms, and now they are the most successful car company in the world. Who knows what this company will even be doing in 100 years, but it’s pretty certain that it will be something for the betterment of mankind.

Just to give a little preview into the content of the book, here are the 14 principles that flow from the underlying Toyota Way philosophy:

• Long term philosophy
• Process – Create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface
• Process – Use “pull” systems to avoid overproduction
• Process – Level out the workload (tortoise, not the hare)
• Process – Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time
• Process – Standardized tasks are the foundation for continuous improvement
• Process – Use visual control so no problems are hidden
• Process – Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and processes
• People and partners – Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others
• People and partners – Develop exceptional people and teams who follow your company’s philosophy
• People and partners – respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them to improve
• Problem solving – Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation
• Problem solving – Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options; implement decisions rapidly
• Problem solving – Become a learning organization through relentless reflection and continuous improvement

I highly recommend reading this book. I took careful notes while I read, and came up with several additional resources that may be of interest. For more details to the above list or principles, here is a mind map (The Toyota Way, original Xmind source) that I created while reading the book. At the same time I was reading this, I was also learning about Agile development, and noticed that there was a lot of overlap, so I added connections in the mind map between Agile and Toyota Way. As part of our book study, we visited a lean report out for ThedaCare (a local health care organization here in WI). They obviously have embraced the philosophy and long term thinking and it shows from everyone who presented or spoke. There is a book by John Toussaint called On the Mend: Revolutionizing Healthcare to Save Lives and Transform the Industry that describes the experience of lean at Theda Care. I was also very interested in differences between Japanese and Western culture that lead this philosophy to develop in Japan, and the book mentions a book called The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently … and Why by Richard Nisbett. Strangely, while the philosophy developed and blossomed in Japan, it was heavily based on the work of a westerner, Samuel Smiles, who published a book titled Self-Help in 1859. I have not read these follow up books yet, but I intend to.

10000 Year Clock

I read about an engineering project last year in the November 2011 Issue of IEEE Spectrum to build a clock that will last for 10000 years [1]. The project was started by Danny Hillis in 1995 to generate thought about the distant future, human civilization, and our role now in this bigger picture. The scale of the project is the order of magnitude of the pyramids to the ancient Egyptians. It will be something from our time of incredible change and human growth that will endure. The project is sponsored by Jeff Bezos from Amazon through The Long Now Foundation, and may eventually result in multiple clocks created around the world. From an engineering standpoint, the project is amazing, because the clock is being designed completely as a mechanical device, hundreds of feet in scale, with accuracy and durability to still be keeping time 10000 years from now. The first clock is currently being constructed in a mountain in the desert of West Texas outside a small town called Van Horn. For more information about the design and the project, check out The Long Now Foundation’s web site. Sign up now as a member (requires paid membership) to get first priority for visiting the clock when it opens.

[1] Kushner, David. November 2011. “Ticking To Eternity.” IEEE Spectrum Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 11.

Freedom and Digital Inclusion

I came across a thought provoking article in IEEE Communications Magazine this past year regarding digital inclusion [1]. The article describes six threats to personal freedom that digital technology presents and they are surveillance, censorship, proprietary software, restricted formats, software as a service, and copyright enforcement.  The author contrasts the desire for convenience with freedom.  Most digital technologies have been employed to bring convenience to people, however the unintended consequence is that they infringe on our freedom.  As one example, governments are increasingly employing personal digital devices (smart phones) for surveillance, collecting data on people’s locations as well as who they communicate with, and in extreme cases to eavesdrop on those communications.  The article has many other examples of how the six threats are increasingly encroaching on personal freedom.

One of the primary focuses of the article is on free software, defined as having freedom to run the program as you wish, freedom to view the source code and modify as you wish, freedom to redistribute exact copies to help your neighbor, and freedom to distribute modified versions to help your community.  There are certainly benefits to this model of software development and use.  I think the concept of private property rights are deeply connected to our understanding of freedom.  To quote Thomas Jefferson, “The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management.” [2].  When the fruits of your labor are tangible things, private property is easily defined.  However when your labor produces strictly information, the definition of private property is much more complicated.  On the one hand, how can any one person or corporation own any idea, knowledge, or information?  It exists even before the person created it or thought about it.  It isn’t fair that someone else can’t independently think of it on their own.  It also isn’t fair that someone else can steal the idea and receive most of the benefits of it (digital technology certainly makes stealing easy).  It doesn’t seem very effecient to not share knowledge and ideas though because we can build new knowledge upon the existing much faster.  How can the originator be compensated fairly for their work in discovering it?  We are increasingly pursuing a path of strict government enforcement of intellectual private property rights (ie copyrights).  It makes sense that everyone is better off if we share all intellectual property, but it also makes sense that the originator should be fairly compensated for it.  Our current capitalistic economic system does not make it easy for both of these goals to be met.

The author’s solutions seem weak to me.  First he proposes voluntary donations to content creators as one solution.  Then he proposes a system of taxation on internet connectivity and blank media, with the proceeds distributed to the information producers.  I don’t see a practical and fair way to accomplish this while still promoting high productivity as capitalism is so effective at.  This is clearly something that needs lot of philosophical focus put on it to come up with reasonable systems before we end up enslaved by governments and corporations.

An interesting question came up today at work related to open source product development software.  Which software would be higher quality and thus better suited for use in developing safety critical devices:
1) Closed software developed by a corporation with good quality software processes, detailed verification test plans, and product support engineers on call
2) Open source software developed collectively, continuously tested by a large user community in real world conditions, and constant updates, enhancements, and bug fixes by the user community

I’m curious to hear your opinions.

[1] Stallman, Richard. February 2010. “Is Digital Inclusion a Good Thing? How Can We Make Sure It Is?” IEEE Communications Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 2.

[2] Jefferson, Thomas. July 12, 1816. Letter to Samuel Kercheval.

Thomas Jefferson

I have just completed reading a book titled The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson by Kevin J. Hayes.  Normally I would consider this topic outside the scope of this blog, however this book has inspired me to embark on a new project in the coming year.  Since there was no logical category for this endeavor, I have decided to add the category of Philosophy to this blog.

The book describes Thomas Jefferson’s love of books, and how the books that he read and referenced influenced his thinking and his life.  My new project will be to read some of the books that influenced Jefferson with the goals to understand his way of thinking more thoroughly, and to drive some personal intellectual growth.  As I was reading the book, I highlighted those books that seemed most influential to Jefferson as well as the ones that seemed most interesting to me.  In many ways, I’m a little surprised that I have not read many of these already, having earned bachelors and masters of science degrees.  In Jefferson’s view, I clearly would not be considered very educated.

The project will be summarized and tracked on a page on this blog.  As I read books, I will make blog entries describing what I learned.