Lean Manufacturing is the term coined by Womack and Jones in their seminal book “The machine that changed the world” to describe the Toyota Production System. The focus on manufacturing has broadened to service activities and the public sector and now we talk about “lean thinking” or just “lean”. There have been numerous publications about lean processes and tools many of these don’t provide the context in which “lean” is at its most effective. The model presented in the “Toyota Way 2001” provides the context.
The top two pillars are Continuous Improvement and Respect for People; all Toyota members, at every level, are expected to use these values in their daily work and interactions.
Respect for People is a broad commitment. It means respect for all people touched by Toyota including employees, customers, investors, suppliers, dealers, the communities in which Toyota operates and society at large. It has two sub categories:
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Respect – we respect others, make every effort to understand each other, take responsibility and do our best to build mutual trust. |
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Teamwork – we stimulate personal professional growth, share the opportunities of development and maximise individual and team performance |
Continuous Improvement is defined as “we are never satisfied with where we are and always improve our business by putting forth our best ideas and efforts”. It has three sub categories to complete the house:
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Challenge – we form a long-term vision meeting challenges with courage and creativity to realise our dream |
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Kaizen – we improve our business operations continuously, always driving for innovation and evolution |
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Genchi Genbutsu – we believe in going to the source to find the facts to make correct decisions, build consensus and achieve goals at our best speed. |
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Many organisations use the lean processes and tools but do not achieve the gains that Toyota has achieved. Whilst there are many reasons for this certainly one is that the “respect for people” value is no where near as strong in many “lean” organisations as it is at Toyota. Site visits and tours will demonstrate the principles, processes and tools but to really understand you have to look beyond the visible activities to the attitudes, behaviours and values embedded in the people. Whilst the principles of the culture of a lean organisation can be taught implementation is all together another proposition.
Business Transformation endeavours to bring out the “respect for people” value throughout our lean training programmes but our focus is on the processes, tools and techniques of continuous improvement. We provide three standard training programmes:
** Please click the course of interest to access the details **
Business Transformation also develops custom courses and programmes to suit an organisations particular requirements and the needs of their management and staff.
We are only too delighted to provide assistance in helping you decide which courses are right for you and your organisation. In fact, our preferred approach would be to start by discussing your organisation’s Lean objectives and strategy. We would then seek to provide input and guidance on both the training programme and establishing the management infrastructures and selecting initial projects to ensure that you gain the maximum return from your investment in Lean; please contact us to discuss your requirements. |
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