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I used to work for a Toyota supplier years ago, and got to visit one of their ports where cars and parts enter the US from Japan for further assembly (like a mi

I used to work for a Toyota supplier years ago, and got to visit one of their ports where cars and parts enter the US from Japan for further assembly (like a mix of car garage and factory). It was striking how organized and neat everything is. It all boiled down to "Kaizen", another simple concept meaning "continuous improvement." From what I remember, one implementation of kaizen was that employees were expected to stop what they were doing two or three times a day and spend 10 minutes organizing their workspace. This seeming waste of 20-30 minutes a day actually increased efficiency by having all tools in the right places at all times. Working with them was a real eye-opening experience - it showed me how simple concepts can have a huge impact on a business when applying them consistently and with (sometimes maddening) discipline. As I was reading this Wikipedia entry, I came upon the part where it said it was developed by Toyota and actually uttered out loud "of course it's Toyota!" I have nothing but respect for their work ethic and discipline.

52-6F-62 8y ago
I worked for a similar company previously as well— a Toyota subsidiary. While I largely agree with you, in North America I can't help but think that some of the principles are sometimes mis-applied. Related to the principle of Kaizen, I was witness to continuous improvement being used as justification to continually demand more of employees to the point where practices like you've mentioned were actually discouraged. If your machine stopped for that long, management and maintenance would be flagged down automatically. 20 to 30 minutes of downtime in a day would have been flat-out unacceptable no matter the reason. The cause being that if your workflow increased in efficiency and accuracy to the point where manufacturing goals were being matched and or beat, the goals would increase without investigation. after a few iterations of that, operators would find themselves always below the threshold of required output. This was often used as justification to let employees go to fill the positions with temp staffers. Keep in mind this was over a decade ago and was local NA management's initiatives. So I guess like anything it has to be applied properly to see the proclaimed benefits.

52-6F-62 8y ago

I worked for a similar company previously as well— a Toyota subsidiary. While I largely agree with you, in North America I can't help but think that some of the principles are sometimes mis-applied. Related to the principle of Kaizen, I was witness to continuous improvement being used as justification to continually demand more of employees to the point where practices like you've mentioned were actually discouraged. If your machine stopped for that long, management and maintenance would be flagged down automatically. 20 to 30 minutes of downtime in a day would have been flat-out unacceptable no matter the reason. The cause being that if your workflow increased in efficiency and accuracy to the point where manufacturing goals were being matched and or beat, the goals would increase without investigation. after a few iterations of that, operators would find themselves always below the threshold of required output. This was often used as justification to let employees go to fill the positions with temp staffers. Keep in mind this was over a decade ago and was local NA management's initiatives. So I guess like anything it has to be applied properly to see the proclaimed benefits.