Bringing Toyota Close to Home

<h1>Bringing Toyota Close to Home</h1>Author: <a title="Peter Peterka" href="http://www.articlesbase.com/authors/peter-peterka/58415.htm">Peter Peterka</a> Your company need not be in the automotive industry to benefit from the principles of the Toyota Production System. Whether you're running a critical care unit, overseeing cross-country trucking operations or opening an art school, you can learn valuable lessons from the Toyota Production System. We'll apply TPS in certain situations to bring some principles into focus. Waste (muda) TPS frowns on waste. Waste happens when the wrong processes are employed and no one bothers to stop to solve the weaknesses and defects in a given process. Toyota promotes attention to detail not later but right away. If people prepare ahead of time and do their homework, the processes won't be wrong. As one writer jokingly said, the devil is in the preparation. Unfortunately, thorough preparation seems to be a tall order for many. If you're running a health facility that provides critical care, what are some potential areas of waste? In a health care unit, supplies and equipment that are normally used first are stored in an area that takes five minutes to access. It could be the way the rooms were initially laid out, it could be due to lack of planning, it could be indifference on the part of health workers. If you were to run an efficient facility for the sole purpose of saving lives, shouldn't the urgent materials and equipment be within easy reach so that when ambulances transport people in need of immediate attention, no time is wasted by scrambling, getting the equipment up and running. The same goes for your art school. While it makes for good publicity, why have an overstock of art supplies when your current enrolment dictates that not even 50% of these supplies will be used during the semester? When there's too much inventory on art paints, for example, the paints and watercolors will eventually dry out and won't be of much use for the next batch of students. In the trucking industry and especially in light of high fuel prices, trucking routes can be organized in such a way that a truck does not have to go back and forth to the central to pick up merchandise. If a truck were to return to home base say three times a day to deliver merchandise to a different location each time, calculate the cost of the return trip in terms of travelling time, fuel consumption, and manhours. If trucking routes were more organized, the same truck could do different deliveries by sticking to only one route without ever having to return to the central station. Just in Time (JIT) Toyota created this popular phrase to promote the idea that materials should be moved and made available so that the next operation in the production cycle is not delayed. JIT of course can be applied to work places and situations other than in the manufacturing sector (getting to the church in time to be married is certainly only one of the thousands of examples). Take the case of a public relations outfit. If you have a busy public relations practice where you have writers who work round the clock for hundreds of your clients, giving them too much work than they can handle overburdening them to be exact can lead to multiple delays. These multiple delays are illustrated in the example below: Company A schedules a product launch. It needs a plethora of press releases. Your agency receives the mandate to do these press releases. You assign it to your favorite writer. This writer suddenly has a family emergency and cannot finish the press releases. Company A does not receive the press releases on time and has had to postpone whatever announcements were scheduled. In the meantime, the product has not been released to the market. This particular situation may seem unimportant compared to a massive car assembly line, but the consequences are just as serious. When there's substantial writing to be done, you should not have your favorite writer do all the work just to impress your clients. Arrange it in such a way that each writer gets a fair share of the writing load, so that a promised deadline does not turn into an embarrassing negotiation for an extended deadline. By spreading the work, you give your other writers the chance to prove their talents. Kaizen In A Team Leader's Guide to Lean Kaizen Events ( Breakthrough Performance Press, 2006) authors William Wes Waldo, Tom Jones, Neil DeCarlo and Colin Moore focus on another Japanese concept Kaizen. The term is actually made up of two words: kai (change) and zen (good). In their book, the authors begin with the premise that change is good. Good change, however, is better. Kaizen aims to break down the project mentality so that it motivates people to action. We once worked in a distribution company where the Chief Executive Officer wanted to implement some changes in the product marketing section. The company was a successful distribution operation, thanks to an efficient product marketing team that had been doing the same tasks for many years with little deviation. When the CEO realized that changes were needed to bring back straying customers back to the fold, some key managers resisted these changes. When asked why, they refused to speak up. His instincts told him that change was inevitable and would bring back the thousands of customers it had lost. Someone argued that departing customers can always be replaced by new customers, but the chairman had a more benevolent nature and sincerely wanted to keep his old customers. The CEO borrowed from the practices of lean manufacturing by appointing a Black Belt to oversee the change. Black belts and green belts were martial arts titles conferred by Motorola on some of its employees when it was eyeing the Malcolm Bridge National Quality Award. While not strictly an invention of the Toyota Production System the terms black belts and green belts would be a close equivalent of the work teams and participatory management that Toyota is known for. Peter Peterka is the President of SixSigma.us. For information on <a href="http://www.6sigma.us/">Six Sigma</a>, <a href="http://www.6sigma.us/six-sigma-training.php">Six Sigma Certification</a> or <a href="http://www.6sigma.us/six-sigma-tampa.php">Six Sigma Tampa </a>programs contact Peter Peterka. About the Author: Peter Peterka is the Principal Consultant in practice areas of DMAIC and DFSS. Peter has eleven years of experience performing as a Master Black Belt, and has over 15 years experience in industry as an improvement specialist and engineer working with numerous companies, including 3M, Dell, Dow, GE, HP, Intel, Motorola, Seagate, Xerox and even the US Men's Olympic Team. For partial list look here. Peter is a certified a Master Black Belt and holds an MS degree in Statistics from Iowa State and a BS in Chemical Engineering from Purdue. Peter worked for 3M over 10 years where he gained extensive experience applying Sigma Methodologies to a variety of processes.Article Source: <a href="http://www.articlesbase.com/">ArticlesBase.com</a> - <a href="http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/bringing-toyota-close-to-home-731211.html" title="Bringing Toyota Close to Home">Bringing Toyota Close to Home</a>

Your company need not be in the automotive industry to benefit from the principles of the Toyota Production System. Whether you're running a critical care unit, overseeing cross-country trucking operations or opening an art school, you can learn valuable lessons from the Toyota Production System. We'll apply TPS in certain situations to bring some principles into focus. Waste (muda) TPS frowns on waste. Waste happens when the wrong processes are employed and no one bothers to stop to solve the weaknesses and defects in a given process. Toyota promotes attention to detail not later but right away. If people prepare ahead of time and do their homework, the processes won't be wrong. As one writer jokingly said, the devil is in the preparation. Unfortunately, thorough preparation seems to be a tall order for many. If you're running a health facility that provides critical care, what are some potential areas of waste? In a health care unit, supplies and equipment that are normally used first are stored in an area that takes five minutes to access. It could be the way the rooms were initially laid out, it could be due to lack of planning, it could be indifference on the part of health workers. If you were to run an efficient facility for the sole purpose of saving lives, shouldn't the urgent materials and equipment be within easy reach so that when ambulances transport people in need of immediate attention, no time is wasted by scrambling, getting the equipment up and running. The same goes for your art school. While it makes for good publicity, why have an overstock of art supplies when your current enrolment dictates that not even 50% of these supplies will be used during the semester? When there's too much inventory on art paints, for example, the paints and watercolors will eventually dry out and won't be of much use for the next batch of students. In the trucking industry and especially in light of high fuel prices, trucking routes can be organized in such a way that a truck does not have to go back and forth to the central to pick up merchandise. If a truck were to return to home base say three times a day to deliver merchandise to a different location each time, calculate the cost of the return trip in terms of travelling time, fuel consumption, and manhours. If trucking routes were more organized, the same truck could do different deliveries by sticking to only one route without ever having to return to the central station. Just in Time (JIT) Toyota created this popular phrase to promote the idea that materials should be moved and made available so that the next operation in the production cycle is not delayed. JIT of course can be applied to work places and situations other than in the manufacturing sector (getting to the church in time to be married is certainly only one of the thousands of examples). Take the case of a public relations outfit. If you have a busy public relations practice where you have writers who work round the clock for hundreds of your clients, giving them too much work than they can handle overburdening them to be exact can lead to multiple delays. These multiple delays are illustrated in the example below: Company A schedules a product launch. It needs a plethora of press releases. Your agency receives the mandate to do these press releases. You assign it to your favorite writer. This writer suddenly has a family emergency and cannot finish the press releases. Company A does not receive the press releases on time and has had to postpone whatever announcements were scheduled. In the meantime, the product has not been released to the market. This particular situation may seem unimportant compared to a massive car assembly line, but the consequences are just as serious. When there's substantial writing to be done, you should not have your favorite writer do all the work just to impress your clients. Arrange it in such a way that each writer gets a fair share of the writing load, so that a promised deadline does not turn into an embarrassing negotiation for an extended deadline. By spreading the work, you give your other writers the chance to prove their talents. Kaizen In A Team Leader's Guide to Lean Kaizen Events ( Breakthrough Performance Press, 2006) authors William Wes Waldo, Tom Jones, Neil DeCarlo and Colin Moore focus on another Japanese concept Kaizen. The term is actually made up of two words: kai (change) and zen (good). In their book, the authors begin with the premise that change is good. Good change, however, is better. Kaizen aims to break down the project mentality so that it motivates people to action. We once worked in a distribution company where the Chief Executive Officer wanted to implement some changes in the product marketing section. The company was a successful distribution operation, thanks to an efficient product marketing team that had been doing the same tasks for many years with little deviation. When the CEO realized that changes were needed to bring back straying customers back to the fold, some key managers resisted these changes. When asked why, they refused to speak up. His instincts told him that change was inevitable and would bring back the thousands of customers it had lost. Someone argued that departing customers can always be replaced by new customers, but the chairman had a more benevolent nature and sincerely wanted to keep his old customers. The CEO borrowed from the practices of lean manufacturing by appointing a Black Belt to oversee the change. Black belts and green belts were martial arts titles conferred by Motorola on some of its employees when it was eyeing the Malcolm Bridge National Quality Award. While not strictly an invention of the Toyota Production System the terms black belts and green belts would be a close equivalent of the work teams and participatory management that Toyota is known for.

Peter Peterka is the President of SixSigma.us. For information on <a onClick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/article_exit_link');" href="http://www.6sigma.us/">Six Sigma</a>, <a onClick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/article_exit_link');" href="http://www.6sigma.us/six-sigma-training.php">Six Sigma Certification</a> or <a onClick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/article_exit_link');" href="http://www.6sigma.us/six-sigma-tampa.php">Six Sigma Tampa </a>programs contact Peter Peterka.

Peter Peterka is the Principal Consultant in practice areas of DMAIC and DFSS. Peter has eleven years of experience performing as a Master Black Belt, and has over 15 years experience in industry as an improvement specialist and engineer working with numerous companies, including 3M, Dell, Dow, GE, HP, Intel, Motorola, Seagate, Xerox and even the US Men's Olympic Team. For partial list look here. Peter is a certified a Master Black Belt and holds an MS degree in Statistics from Iowa State and a BS in Chemical Engineering from Purdue. Peter worked for 3M over 10 years where he gained extensive experience applying Sigma Methodologies to a variety of processes.

Rate this Article:

0 / 5 stars - 0 vote(s)

Re-Publish

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/bringing-toyota-close-to-home-731211.html

Article Tags: Six Sigma, Black Belt, 6 Sigma, Green Belt, Six Sigma Training, Six Sigma Certification, Yellow Belt, Master Black Belt, Lean Flow

Related Articles
Related Q&A

Latest Business Articles
More from Peter Peterka

Getting College Placement - How To Use A Mentoring Program

By: Vikram Kumar | 21/12/2009
If you are getting ready to graduate from college or have already graduated and are looking for a job in your field, you need to leave no stone unturned when it comes to finding college placement jobs.

Claiming compensation on behalf of children

By: brookepens | 21/12/2009
Making a personal injury claim can seem like a particularly daunting task, but this process is made even more complex when the victim involved is a minor.

Are Business Consultants a Bunch of Frauds!?

By: Ben Angel | 21/12/2009
Earlier this week one of my clients exposed to me that she felt like a fraud as a business consultant. She can't be the only one. Right!?

7 Fatal Sins that Will Kill Your Personal Brand - What Tiger Woods Should Have Known!

By: Ben Angel | 21/12/2009
We're now two weeks into the Tiger Woods scandal and it has already cost him a lucrative contract with his sponsor Accenture but could he be set to lose more!? It is reported that his deal with Nike is worth $40 million dollars a year.

Selling Your House with the Help of Internet Estate Agents

By: Vikram Kumar | 21/12/2009
If you are selling your house and want to do it as easily and quickly as possible, then one of the best ways to achieve this is through internet estate agents.

How to Go About Selling Your House through Internet Estate Agent

By: Vikram Kumar | 21/12/2009
If you are selling your house then you will find that the quickest and easiest way to do this, which will also save you money, is to do so with the help of an internet estate agent.

Selling Your House in a Hurry with Online Estate Agents

By: Vikram Kumar | 21/12/2009
If you have inherited a property from an elderly relative, perhaps sharing this inheritance with other family members, then it’s likely that you will all want to take your share of the profits from the sale of that property.

Why You Should Consider Using Online Estate Agents When Selling Your House

By: Vikram Kumar | 21/12/2009
If you are selling your house and want to do so fast, but without selling it for less than its value, such as is often the case with distress sales, then there are a number of things you can do.

The Six Sigma Process – What is It?

By: Peter Peterka | 11/02/2009 | Business
Sometimes you come across terms that stay in your mind, while at other times they just vanish from your head in the blink of an eye. The term Six Sigma belongs to the latter category as it is a business management process that has a lot to offer individual candidates as well as organizations. The Six Sigma process achieves this using focused improvement in quality and productivity.

Bringing Toyota Close to Home

By: Peter Peterka | 21/01/2009 | Business
Your company need not be in the automotive industry to benefit from the principles of the Toyota Production System. Whether you're running a critical care unit, overseeing cross-country trucking operations or opening an art school, you can learn valuable lessons from the Toyota Production System.

Lean Six Sigma in the US Army - Toward Efficiency

By: Peter Peterka | 02/01/2009 | Business
All of the U.S. Armed Forces have adapted Six Sigma to improve processes and reduce waste. This article will focus on the use of Lean Six Sigma within the U.S. Army to improve efficiency.

Application of Lean Six Sigma in the Public Sector:

By: Peter Peterka | 31/12/2008 | Business
Six Sigma and Lean have been used separately in the public sector for years. Companies are now finding the benefits of combining Six Sigma and Lean for a more effective result. This articles explains how to apply Lean Six Sigma within the public sector.

The Error Proofing Component of the Change Management Toolset

By: Peter Peterka | 30/12/2008 | Goal Setting
One element of Six Sigma’s success is the error proofing component. This article will look into the importance of error proofing, its benefits, and how it is implemented within the change management toolset.

Principles of Change Management by Peter Peterka

By: Peter Peterka | 29/12/2008 | Business
Change management is an indisputable tool for success. The principles of change management are described within this article. Employing all of these principles is required to achieve a positive result.

The Affinity Diagram as a Brainstorming Tool

By: Peter Peterka | 29/12/2008 | Coaching
Brainstorming is a great way to open up dialog and find solutions. However, this method can be hard to control. This article will provide valuable information about how to make brainstorming more effective by using the Affinity Diagram used in Six Sigma.

Lean Six Sigma and the Navy

By: Peter Peterka | 27/12/2008 | Business
Lean Six Sigma is used in all branches of the U.S. military. This piece will discuss how Lean Six Sigma was implemented within the U.S. Navy.