30 ms·

The Toyota Production System (2013)

224 points by louis-paul 6y ago

eatonphil 6y ago
I highly recommend the books "Toyota Production System" and "The Machine That Changed The World" for a background on the manufacturing cousin/ancestor of agile software development. I wish there were newer studies though that cover the rise of Hyundai/Kia quality in the last two decades. If you know of any please let me know.
- LeifCarrotson 6y ago
  Recently read "The machine that changed the world", and I too wish there was a more recent study. I've worked in several Michigan and Indiana tier 1s and OEM plants, and seen some of the differences described, but the book is 30 years old now. The fundamentals are still fundamental, and culture change is really, really slow, but everyone's making improvements.
- Judgmentality 6y ago
  > I wish there were newer studies though that cover the rise of Hyundai/Kia quality in the last two decades. I realize this is a tangent, but the fact that Hyundai managed to build this and sell it with a 10 year warranty is incredible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhsgdwUX1-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhsgdwUX1-w
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  Absolutely mind blowing to watch that transformation. And not just in durability and features but in aesthetics as well. A BMW interior is still a BMW interior but the interior of a 2020 Hyundai is much closer to the interior of a 2020 BMW than the interior of a 2002 Hyundai was to the interior of a 2020 BMW. This is one are where others impress as well. Even GM and Ford have come far in this regard.
  - mixmastamyk 6y ago
    Guessing that last 2020 was supposed to be a 2002?
- OldHand2018 6y ago
  “The Machine that Changed the World” is an excellent book detailing differences between the Japanese style and American style of designing and building cars. Near the end of the book is one of the most important parts, yet nobody seems to talk about it. Workers and suppliers were committed to the system because the automaker was committed to the worker and the supplier. This is the cornerstone to the entire thing working. You can’t do the Toyota Production System without it, and few companies are willing to do so.
- davidrm 6y ago
  Not only that! The story behind their newly founded N division is very interesting. They poached a long-time BMW executive Albert Biermann who headed multiple vehicle developments and the BMW M group, and tasked him with bringing up the N high performance divison within Hyundai (N as in Namyang R&D, but he says also Nurburgring). Since then he's been promoted to President & Head of R&D. As my most recent comment history says, I've spent several weeks in Namyang and I've never heard of an executive's name being (positively) invoked so many times inside the garage :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4iV4NeDABc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4iV4NeDABc
neom 6y ago
As a huge Ed Deming fan, I'd recommend these books: - The Essential Deming: Leadership Principles from the Father of Quality: https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Deming-Leadership-Principles-Quality/dp/0071790225/ https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Deming-Leadership-Principle... - The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education: https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Industry-Government-Education-Press/dp/0262535939/ https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Industry-Government-Educati... - The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer: https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Way-Management-Principles-Manufacturer/dp/0071392319/ https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Way-Management-Principles-Manu... Deming is really a great thinking in the area of product development and agile methodologies.
- vvanders 6y ago
  Another great perspective is This American Life's episode on the NUMMI plant[1]. Coming full circle from Deming back to GM. [1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
  - petra 6y ago
    I haven't listened to the podcast yet, so - why NUMMI we're not able to copy the Toyota production system - given that Toyota has sent them experienced advisors ?
    - DubiousPusher 6y ago
      They did actually. I can't remember why specifically they closed the plant in the end. But one of the overriding laws of global capitalism is that it's possible to do everything right but and still lose cause of a trade deal or an acquisition or a global recession or...
      - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
        GM pulled out. GM already pulled out of that factory in 1982 and left the workers with nothing. By the time Toyota came back with a JV agreement w/GM in 1984, the NUMMI factory was the only Toyota factory with unionized labour force. UAW Local 2244 embraced Toyota’s methods and processes. But when GM quit(again), Toyota had no need to be there anymore with a local unionized work force. How would that jive their non unionized labour force everywhere else? GM quit. That’s what they did. They were quitters. As was Ford(quit in neighboring Milpitas a few years before GM). Toyota was brilliant. They did good to the workers they let go when they quit NUMMI. They did good by almost $280 million. Towards the end, NUMMI only rolled out Toyotas. It’s all Tesla now. For a while Jobs ran his NEXT manufacturing from NUMMI facility before he was welcomed back to Apple. That place is legit magick. By all accounts, NUMMI was a great place to work and with GM gone, Toyota did not need the UAW Local 2244. Why would they? It is also California’s insane regulations and strangling policies that drove the last auto manufacturer out. Until Tesla came into the picture. And CA almost drove Tesla away recently during the covid year..who knows what the future holds.
nateberkopec 6y ago
If you produce physical goods of any kind, Shigeo Shingo should absolutely be required reading. His ideas around quality control and setup times still sound revolutionary even now.
eesmith 6y ago
Can anyone comment here on the "Uddevalla concept"? Quoting https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/10785.html https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/10785.html : > Both researchers and practitioners in industrial organization ask themselves today whether lean production is the only possible model for the future. Enriching Production proposes a radically different alternative, which was put into practice at Volvo’s Uddevalla plant during its brief life span. The book "Enriching Production" is at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/10785/1/MPRA_paper_10785.pdf https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/10785/1/MPRA_paper_10785.pdf . As I have no experience with lean nor with automotive production history, I find it hard to interpret.
- stevegalla 6y ago
  I worked in automotive manufacturing at a tier 1 supplier. I think this is easier to read than the “Enriching Production” book: http://research.engr.oregonstate.edu/gwt/biblio/enriching-production-perspectives-volvos-uddevalla-plant-alternative-lean-production http://research.engr.oregonstate.edu/gwt/biblio/enriching-pr... I think there are two differences one is a technical / engineering difference and the other is aimed at the worker enjoyment and well-being. The Toyota (lean) approach is presented as being all about manufacturing efficiency at the expense of the worker where as the Uddevalla approach appears to be sacrificing production efficiency for the benefit of worker enjoyment and well-being. From the technical side it seems to be the assembly line production approach (lean / Toyota) vs craft / one off production approach (Uddevalla). Current automotive manufacturing practices are based on an assembly line. This dates back to Henry Ford [1] [2]. The frame of the car travels down a line and components are brought to the workers to be added to the frame. The worker has a specialized task (e.g., attaching the passenger side door) that is repeated for the entire shift (or some specified amount of time). There used to be a “craft” approach to manufacturing [3]. One person (or a few people) would make the entire product from beginning to end. This seems to be the team approach to production at Uddevalla. Note: I didn’t read Enriching Production word for word and I have never heard of the Uddevalla approach before. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Park_Ford_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Park_Ford_Plant [2] see the mass production section for an earlier assembly line. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Arsenal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Arsenal [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craft_production https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craft_production
neves 6y ago
I've lost my faith in all this Just int Time marketing stuff. I tried to buy a specific Toyota car in Brazil and they said that it would take 6 months to get me one. I don't know which kind of legal bureaucracy created this, but I went with a Honda.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- pulse7 6y ago
  If you want to buy a >>specific<< configuration of any brand, you will have to wait for months - even for Honda...
- CamperBob2 6y ago
  More important to the consumer, JIT often means waiting weeks for replacement parts to be back-ordered several levels up the chain. It's a mistake to think there are no downsides to this methodology. Ultimately JIT manufacturing should be seen for what it is: central planning in action. Good for the central planners, certainly, but not for the end users.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    > Ultimately JIT manufacturing should be seen for what it is: central planning in action. Good for the central planners, certainly, but not for the end users. That's kind of funny. JIT is actually meant to be something closer to the market solution many others propose, as opposed to central planning. It's about identifying the local needs and ensuring they're met rather than trying to drive a top-down solution to the production problem.
  - adingus 6y ago
    JIT doesn't mean you should carry no inventory or wait for orders. You should carry enough stock that you sell out of just in time for the replenishment to arrive.
    - mschuster91 6y ago
m3kw9 6y ago
Notice the blurred pics being presented as motion blur trying to do seal “secrets”
mcot2 6y ago
There are a lot of amazing concepts that Toyota developed. It requires a lot of discipline, focus and commitment to implement properly. One thing I didn’t see mentioned that Tesla is currently doing is a very strong relationship between design and production. The upcoming Cybertruck for example doesn’t have paint and it has an exoskeleton design that should be much easier to produce. Over the years I have not seen any radical designs from Toyota that suggest that the ease of production was influencing radical design choices.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Designing for production became highly unfashionable because the big three did it extensively in the 1970s and 1980s resulting in very efficient production of cars nobody wanted. It's one thing to try something new. It's another to re-try something that failed (or was correlated with failure) within the lifetimes of people still in the industry. Toyota doesn't buck trends like that. They're very conservative. Tesla on the other hand takes risks.
  - aidenn0 6y ago
    Were the cars not substantially less expensive to produce? Even the notoriously ugly Aztek was able to sell "okay" at a discount to similarly equipped cars. I guess nobody wants to be the discount brand in the long term...
    - hindsightbias 6y ago
      https://junkyardmob.com/blog/what-happened-to-chrysler-k-car https://junkyardmob.com/blog/what-happened-to-chrysler-k-car Great as long as you expect only 50K miles out of them. Toyota has a completely different strategy,
      - aidenn0 6y ago
        My mom had a K wagon and loved it; she sold it after our first July in Virginia though (it had no A/C and sitting in traffic with no AC when the dew-point is in the upper 70s is no fun). It definitely had more than 50k miles on it when she sold it.
ipnon 6y ago
This is so clearly the optimal organization for a productive firm. But it falls on deaf ears every time. I gave up trying to proselytize. We're going to plan the whole product at the beginning of each quarter, save technical debt for later, over promise and under deliver. But why oh why are we burnt out working the weekends?
- adingus 6y ago
  This is my experience as well at a large aerospace manufacturer. When push comes to shove nobody wants to stop the line or take the extra time to actually do anything management preaches. TPS is cargo-culted like mad.
Barrin92 6y ago
Closely related to the need to walk the Genba, this key principle suggests that to truly understand a situation you need to visit in person. The Toyota Production System requires a high level of management presence on the factory floor From personal observation this is very true, Japan has a great and unpretentious grey collar culture. There's a way in which all work is seen as equally essential and managers aren't above anyone else. Not just at Toyota, but even waiters in restaurants are treated like this, I think it shows in how negatively tipping is seen in Japan. It's also a culture that exists here in Germany in Mittelstand companies, although sadly less and less in large firms where management culture from the Anglosphere seems to have gained popularity over the last 20-30 years. American management always reminds me of the historical British army, where the gentry directly was recruited into the higher ranks American management and workers seem equally stratified.
- etaioinshrdlu 6y ago
  The taxi drivers in Japan take their profession extremely seriously and they are very good at their job.. Interestingly, I’ve heard one profession that is not very well respected in Japan is software.
  - steve_adams_86 6y ago
    I’ve heard this as well. Both from westerners who worked in software in Japan and from Japanese people (all men) who worked in software in Japan. I also work with someone who worked in design in Japan for 7 years, who has been a great insight into the working culture there. Can anyone elaborate or clarify why software developers might not be valued in Japan? I recall one person on HN explaining it as a problem of the market being saturated and software not being as huge of a market as it is in the USA. I can’t speak to that, though.
    - hogFeast 6y ago
      Ironically, based on the original comment, the issue is that East Asian countries (like Germany, which was the archetype industrialisation model for East Asia) are largely run economically for the benefit of large corporations. So developers are hired en masse like every other employee (in particular, skilled labour is hired once after graduation), there is a stigma against switching jobs (even if you could find somewhere to move), employees are essentially interchangeable, and there is almost no innovation. The original comment is hard to understand. Germany and Japan are two of the absolute worst places on earth to be a consumer/worker in the developed world (the IMF even produced a paper on this in an attempt to put pressure on Germany to improve standards for workers). The US is nowhere close to having a management aristocracy because the system is open. Even in the UK, which has a similar economic model, the low-level of competence among managers is actually a major factor behind weak productivity growth. People just long for systems that aren't like the one they have, low levels of employee turnover are not a panacea, they led to heavily rigid management and are often linked to a high proportion of unproductive, family-owned business that are managed by birthright...professional management is, innately, open. If you look at Denmark, high levels of employee turnover actually lead to higher wages because it creates so much more innovation (most countries that have any other model, including Japan, are trying desperately to get away from it). Afaik, France is the only country that has the aristocracy model: it is usually literally impossible to be promoted into management if you didn't go to grandes ecoles, and most of the top jobs in govt and business are just rotated through this group of people. Unlike the US, the curriculum of related courses often has no relation to reality, and is designed to be as complex/abtruse as possible so entry to the higher reaches of society can be limited. It is difficult to understate how envied the US system of management is compared to this...it isn't just that the US does this slightly better, it is that the US is at 100, and everyone else is at 10. It isn't close.
0xbadcafebee 6y ago
The really funny thing is after you learn about TPS, and you talk to project managers, product owners, and executives, they all know it too. And none of them will use any of its lessons. I've found that they basically fear the change and would rather keep doing things the same way even if it results in problems. They think it's safer to try to find a magic bullet that fits into their model, such as going "all-Agile" or "hiring SREs". Anything that isn't a radical change from their hierarchical, waterfall, arbitrary-deadline, afraid-of-deploying-on-friday, drop-everything-we-have-a-great-new-shiny-ball-to-chase bullshit.
known 6y ago
Continuous/Incremental improvements aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen

224 points by louis-paul 6y ago

I highly recommend the books "Toyota Production System" and "The Machine That Changed The World" for a background on the manufacturing cousin/ancestor of agile software development. I wish there were newer studies though that cover the rise of Hyundai/Kia quality in the last two decades. If you know of any please let me know.

LeifCarrotson 6y ago
Recently read "The machine that changed the world", and I too wish there was a more recent study. I've worked in several Michigan and Indiana tier 1s and OEM plants, and seen some of the differences described, but the book is 30 years old now. The fundamentals are still fundamental, and culture change is really, really slow, but everyone's making improvements.
Judgmentality 6y ago
> I wish there were newer studies though that cover the rise of Hyundai/Kia quality in the last two decades. I realize this is a tangent, but the fact that Hyundai managed to build this and sell it with a 10 year warranty is incredible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhsgdwUX1-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhsgdwUX1-w
DubiousPusher 6y ago
Absolutely mind blowing to watch that transformation. And not just in durability and features but in aesthetics as well. A BMW interior is still a BMW interior but the interior of a 2020 Hyundai is much closer to the interior of a 2020 BMW than the interior of a 2002 Hyundai was to the interior of a 2020 BMW. This is one are where others impress as well. Even GM and Ford have come far in this regard.
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  Guessing that last 2020 was supposed to be a 2002?
OldHand2018 6y ago
“The Machine that Changed the World” is an excellent book detailing differences between the Japanese style and American style of designing and building cars. Near the end of the book is one of the most important parts, yet nobody seems to talk about it. Workers and suppliers were committed to the system because the automaker was committed to the worker and the supplier. This is the cornerstone to the entire thing working. You can’t do the Toyota Production System without it, and few companies are willing to do so.
davidrm 6y ago
Not only that! The story behind their newly founded N division is very interesting. They poached a long-time BMW executive Albert Biermann who headed multiple vehicle developments and the BMW M group, and tasked him with bringing up the N high performance divison within Hyundai (N as in Namyang R&D, but he says also Nurburgring). Since then he's been promoted to President & Head of R&D. As my most recent comment history says, I've spent several weeks in Namyang and I've never heard of an executive's name being (positively) invoked so many times inside the garage :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4iV4NeDABc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4iV4NeDABc

neom 6y ago

As a huge Ed Deming fan, I'd recommend these books: - The Essential Deming: Leadership Principles from the Father of Quality: https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Deming-Leadership-Principles-Quality/dp/0071790225/ https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Deming-Leadership-Principle... - The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education: https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Industry-Government-Education-Press/dp/0262535939/ https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Industry-Government-Educati... - The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer: https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Way-Management-Principles-Manufacturer/dp/0071392319/ https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Way-Management-Principles-Manu... Deming is really a great thinking in the area of product development and agile methodologies.

vvanders 6y ago
Another great perspective is This American Life's episode on the NUMMI plant[1]. Coming full circle from Deming back to GM. [1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
- petra 6y ago
  I haven't listened to the podcast yet, so - why NUMMI we're not able to copy the Toyota production system - given that Toyota has sent them experienced advisors ?
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago
    They did actually. I can't remember why specifically they closed the plant in the end. But one of the overriding laws of global capitalism is that it's possible to do everything right but and still lose cause of a trade deal or an acquisition or a global recession or...
    - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
      GM pulled out. GM already pulled out of that factory in 1982 and left the workers with nothing. By the time Toyota came back with a JV agreement w/GM in 1984, the NUMMI factory was the only Toyota factory with unionized labour force. UAW Local 2244 embraced Toyota’s methods and processes. But when GM quit(again), Toyota had no need to be there anymore with a local unionized work force. How would that jive their non unionized labour force everywhere else? GM quit. That’s what they did. They were quitters. As was Ford(quit in neighboring Milpitas a few years before GM). Toyota was brilliant. They did good to the workers they let go when they quit NUMMI. They did good by almost $280 million. Towards the end, NUMMI only rolled out Toyotas. It’s all Tesla now. For a while Jobs ran his NEXT manufacturing from NUMMI facility before he was welcomed back to Apple. That place is legit magick. By all accounts, NUMMI was a great place to work and with GM gone, Toyota did not need the UAW Local 2244. Why would they? It is also California’s insane regulations and strangling policies that drove the last auto manufacturer out. Until Tesla came into the picture. And CA almost drove Tesla away recently during the covid year..who knows what the future holds.

nateberkopec 6y ago

If you produce physical goods of any kind, Shigeo Shingo should absolutely be required reading. His ideas around quality control and setup times still sound revolutionary even now.

eesmith 6y ago

Can anyone comment here on the "Uddevalla concept"? Quoting https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/10785.html https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/10785.html : > Both researchers and practitioners in industrial organization ask themselves today whether lean production is the only possible model for the future. Enriching Production proposes a radically different alternative, which was put into practice at Volvo’s Uddevalla plant during its brief life span. The book "Enriching Production" is at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/10785/1/MPRA_paper_10785.pdf https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/10785/1/MPRA_paper_10785.pdf . As I have no experience with lean nor with automotive production history, I find it hard to interpret.

stevegalla 6y ago
I worked in automotive manufacturing at a tier 1 supplier. I think this is easier to read than the “Enriching Production” book: http://research.engr.oregonstate.edu/gwt/biblio/enriching-production-perspectives-volvos-uddevalla-plant-alternative-lean-production http://research.engr.oregonstate.edu/gwt/biblio/enriching-pr... I think there are two differences one is a technical / engineering difference and the other is aimed at the worker enjoyment and well-being. The Toyota (lean) approach is presented as being all about manufacturing efficiency at the expense of the worker where as the Uddevalla approach appears to be sacrificing production efficiency for the benefit of worker enjoyment and well-being. From the technical side it seems to be the assembly line production approach (lean / Toyota) vs craft / one off production approach (Uddevalla). Current automotive manufacturing practices are based on an assembly line. This dates back to Henry Ford [1] [2]. The frame of the car travels down a line and components are brought to the workers to be added to the frame. The worker has a specialized task (e.g., attaching the passenger side door) that is repeated for the entire shift (or some specified amount of time). There used to be a “craft” approach to manufacturing [3]. One person (or a few people) would make the entire product from beginning to end. This seems to be the team approach to production at Uddevalla. Note: I didn’t read Enriching Production word for word and I have never heard of the Uddevalla approach before. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Park_Ford_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Park_Ford_Plant [2] see the mass production section for an earlier assembly line. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Arsenal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Arsenal [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craft_production https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craft_production

neves 6y ago

I've lost my faith in all this Just int Time marketing stuff. I tried to buy a specific Toyota car in Brazil and they said that it would take 6 months to get me one. I don't know which kind of legal bureaucracy created this, but I went with a Honda.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pulse7 6y ago
If you want to buy a >>specific<< configuration of any brand, you will have to wait for months - even for Honda...
CamperBob2 6y ago
More important to the consumer, JIT often means waiting weeks for replacement parts to be back-ordered several levels up the chain. It's a mistake to think there are no downsides to this methodology. Ultimately JIT manufacturing should be seen for what it is: central planning in action. Good for the central planners, certainly, but not for the end users.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  > Ultimately JIT manufacturing should be seen for what it is: central planning in action. Good for the central planners, certainly, but not for the end users. That's kind of funny. JIT is actually meant to be something closer to the market solution many others propose, as opposed to central planning. It's about identifying the local needs and ensuring they're met rather than trying to drive a top-down solution to the production problem.
- adingus 6y ago
  JIT doesn't mean you should carry no inventory or wait for orders. You should carry enough stock that you sell out of just in time for the replenishment to arrive.
  - mschuster91 6y ago

m3kw9 6y ago

Notice the blurred pics being presented as motion blur trying to do seal “secrets”

mcot2 6y ago

There are a lot of amazing concepts that Toyota developed. It requires a lot of discipline, focus and commitment to implement properly. One thing I didn’t see mentioned that Tesla is currently doing is a very strong relationship between design and production. The upcoming Cybertruck for example doesn’t have paint and it has an exoskeleton design that should be much easier to produce. Over the years I have not seen any radical designs from Toyota that suggest that the ease of production was influencing radical design choices.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
Designing for production became highly unfashionable because the big three did it extensively in the 1970s and 1980s resulting in very efficient production of cars nobody wanted. It's one thing to try something new. It's another to re-try something that failed (or was correlated with failure) within the lifetimes of people still in the industry. Toyota doesn't buck trends like that. They're very conservative. Tesla on the other hand takes risks.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  Were the cars not substantially less expensive to produce? Even the notoriously ugly Aztek was able to sell "okay" at a discount to similarly equipped cars. I guess nobody wants to be the discount brand in the long term...
  - hindsightbias 6y ago
    https://junkyardmob.com/blog/what-happened-to-chrysler-k-car https://junkyardmob.com/blog/what-happened-to-chrysler-k-car Great as long as you expect only 50K miles out of them. Toyota has a completely different strategy,
    - aidenn0 6y ago
      My mom had a K wagon and loved it; she sold it after our first July in Virginia though (it had no A/C and sitting in traffic with no AC when the dew-point is in the upper 70s is no fun). It definitely had more than 50k miles on it when she sold it.

ipnon 6y ago

This is so clearly the optimal organization for a productive firm. But it falls on deaf ears every time. I gave up trying to proselytize. We're going to plan the whole product at the beginning of each quarter, save technical debt for later, over promise and under deliver. But why oh why are we burnt out working the weekends?

adingus 6y ago
This is my experience as well at a large aerospace manufacturer. When push comes to shove nobody wants to stop the line or take the extra time to actually do anything management preaches. TPS is cargo-culted like mad.

Barrin92 6y ago

Closely related to the need to walk the Genba, this key principle suggests that to truly understand a situation you need to visit in person. The Toyota Production System requires a high level of management presence on the factory floor From personal observation this is very true, Japan has a great and unpretentious grey collar culture. There's a way in which all work is seen as equally essential and managers aren't above anyone else. Not just at Toyota, but even waiters in restaurants are treated like this, I think it shows in how negatively tipping is seen in Japan. It's also a culture that exists here in Germany in Mittelstand companies, although sadly less and less in large firms where management culture from the Anglosphere seems to have gained popularity over the last 20-30 years. American management always reminds me of the historical British army, where the gentry directly was recruited into the higher ranks American management and workers seem equally stratified.

etaioinshrdlu 6y ago
The taxi drivers in Japan take their profession extremely seriously and they are very good at their job.. Interestingly, I’ve heard one profession that is not very well respected in Japan is software.
- steve_adams_86 6y ago
  I’ve heard this as well. Both from westerners who worked in software in Japan and from Japanese people (all men) who worked in software in Japan. I also work with someone who worked in design in Japan for 7 years, who has been a great insight into the working culture there. Can anyone elaborate or clarify why software developers might not be valued in Japan? I recall one person on HN explaining it as a problem of the market being saturated and software not being as huge of a market as it is in the USA. I can’t speak to that, though.
  - hogFeast 6y ago
    Ironically, based on the original comment, the issue is that East Asian countries (like Germany, which was the archetype industrialisation model for East Asia) are largely run economically for the benefit of large corporations. So developers are hired en masse like every other employee (in particular, skilled labour is hired once after graduation), there is a stigma against switching jobs (even if you could find somewhere to move), employees are essentially interchangeable, and there is almost no innovation. The original comment is hard to understand. Germany and Japan are two of the absolute worst places on earth to be a consumer/worker in the developed world (the IMF even produced a paper on this in an attempt to put pressure on Germany to improve standards for workers). The US is nowhere close to having a management aristocracy because the system is open. Even in the UK, which has a similar economic model, the low-level of competence among managers is actually a major factor behind weak productivity growth. People just long for systems that aren't like the one they have, low levels of employee turnover are not a panacea, they led to heavily rigid management and are often linked to a high proportion of unproductive, family-owned business that are managed by birthright...professional management is, innately, open. If you look at Denmark, high levels of employee turnover actually lead to higher wages because it creates so much more innovation (most countries that have any other model, including Japan, are trying desperately to get away from it). Afaik, France is the only country that has the aristocracy model: it is usually literally impossible to be promoted into management if you didn't go to grandes ecoles, and most of the top jobs in govt and business are just rotated through this group of people. Unlike the US, the curriculum of related courses often has no relation to reality, and is designed to be as complex/abtruse as possible so entry to the higher reaches of society can be limited. It is difficult to understate how envied the US system of management is compared to this...it isn't just that the US does this slightly better, it is that the US is at 100, and everyone else is at 10. It isn't close.

0xbadcafebee 6y ago

The really funny thing is after you learn about TPS, and you talk to project managers, product owners, and executives, they all know it too. And none of them will use any of its lessons. I've found that they basically fear the change and would rather keep doing things the same way even if it results in problems. They think it's safer to try to find a magic bullet that fits into their model, such as going "all-Agile" or "hiring SREs". Anything that isn't a radical change from their hierarchical, waterfall, arbitrary-deadline, afraid-of-deploying-on-friday, drop-everything-we-have-a-great-new-shiny-ball-to-chase bullshit.

known 6y ago

Continuous/Incremental improvements aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen