If you only ever read one book on the Toyota Production System or Lean Manufacturing then this book by Taiichi Ohno is the one. There are hundreds of books and articles written about TPS / Lean Manufacturing but none provide the foundations that this book by Taiichi Ohno does. It will help you set your baseline on where to start when considering if the concepts developed for TPS are likely to be suitable for your business.
When Akinori Hyodo started work at a Toyota factory in Japan more than 40 years ago, he could never have imagined Australian business people would one day be hanging off his every word. But earlier this year, a group of Queensland executives crowded into an Australian Industry Group meeting room to hear Hyodo give a lecture on the Toyota Production System, a half-century old method of boosting efficiency, also known as lean manufacturing.
Shinka Management held the first of their Australian Lean Leadership Master Classes at CCI in February this year, which brought the experience and teachings of Lean Sensei Akinori Hyodo to Western Australia. Akinori Hyodo, or Hyodo Sensei, is the former factory manager of the Toyota HiAce factory, consistently ranked first for quality out of all Toyota factories.
Toyota Australia is on the way out but the Toyota manufacturing and managerial ethos could well be on the way in. The Toyota Production System – also known as lean manufacturing, lean production, just-in-time production and the Toyota Way – is as famous as it gets in the world of manufacturing and managerial theory and there’s still demand among local companies to know how it works.
WA businesses as diverse as Monadelphous and Jason Windows are tapping the management know-how that has moulded Japan’s industrial powerhouses. So-called “lean” management encapsulates various philosophies and practices but is best associated with Toyota’s production system.
Lean manufacturing is one of Japan’s most valuable competitive advantages in a global market place. I travelled to Japan last year to learn more about what it is, how it operates in practice, and — most importantly — bring home knowledge to support Western Australian businesses.
The big news in the automotive industry last month was the escalation of the ongoing Takata airbag affair. The fault in the airbag inflators was initially brought to the public’s attention with a recall of a limited number of vehicles in 2013. We have since had Takata state that it is does not know which airbags have been supplied for use in which vehicles, with worldwide recalls following involving dozens of models from several car manufacturers.
Chocolate was the background yesterday to a two day management master class in keeping it lean in Adelaide. Thirty executives, from South Australian industries ranging from food and beverage to steel, were at Haigh’s factory in Mile End yesterday to listen to Toyota veteran Akinori Hyodo talk about lean manufacturing and kaizen, the Japanese art of continual improvement.
Japanese management techniques drawn straight from the production lines of that country’s industrial giants are making a surprising contribution to Australian firms as diverse as tech darling REA Group and transport operator Metro Trains. So-called “lean” production methods are exemplars of the rigour and consistency that Japanese industry — and indeed society — is known for.
Lean is a continuous improvement philosophy which is synonymous with Kaizen or the Toyota Production System. The history of lean management or lean manufacturing is traced back to the early years of Toyota and the development of the Toyota Production System after Japan’s defeat in WWII when the company was looking for a means to compete with the US car industry through developing and implementing a range of low-cost improvements within their business.