Here is one reason that we think so many people have put so much effort into imitating the Toyota Production System and still we find Detroit in such a mess.

One of the cornerstones of the Toyota Production System is the commitment to eliminate waste. But “waste” in this context doesn’t mean what most people think it does.

Value and waste are interpretations, shaped by the concerns of the cultures and enterprises in which they appear. The most important wastes (and values) of the last 100+ years were shaped by industrial era concerns for conserving physical and economic resources, financial capital, and production capacity.

The most important values and wastes for the era we have entered are not the same.

Many of those hell-bent on eliminating waste are “looking for love in all the wrong places.”

The central wastes of the new era will be shaped by our concerns for building effective relationships to deal with the challenge of coordinating in this continuously changing, globally connected world.

Have you got examples? Can you see what we are pointing at?

 © Copyright 2006, Chauncey Bell and BABDI, LLC. All rights reserved worldwide.

Greg Neil speculates that maybe the construction industry will be first to invent a 21st century version of what Toyota did, and the US will pass out of contention in the manufacture of automobiles over the coming decades. (Ps: Toyota is a major player in the housing industry in Japan ….)

In the 1950s, Japan was really listening. Life itself was at stake. For fifty years now, our executives in Detroit have had the opportunity to listen, and have not been listening. We have been copying Voltaire’s idiot, Candide, spouting “It’s all for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” I remember when my friend George Kuper returned from an early visit to a Toyota plant in Japan with a covey of US executives, who were puzzled, “What possessed those Japanese businessmen to try and convince us that they were running automobile plants without inventories and warehouses?”

Are essential qualities that have made this a great country disappearing? … no longer relevant? What were those of earlier eras in this country listening to? What are those running the automotive companies today listening to?

© Copyright 2006, Chauncey Bell and BABDI, LLC. All rights reserved worldwide.

While we are at it, let’s follow some other threads as well.

Why have GM and Ford, (and Daimler-Chrysler, and a host of others) not simply copied the successful practices of Toyota? Is what they are doing so unusual, mysterious, or hidden? Since the 1950’s Toyota has invited people to come and tour their plants. Later they sent some of their most senior engineers to Detroit to teach for a number of years in US schools. They said they were doing that to give honor to Henry Ford and others from whom they had learned.

For decades US automakers have picked up popular jargon that originated with the Toyota Production System – just-in-time, continuous improvement, eliminating waste, five why’s, root causes, and so forth – and used it in improvement programs and in describing to the press the things they were doing to improve their companies.

(Is this all marketing hype? Are the companies actually trying to do anything there? From a good deal of work inside the auto industry, I have the interpretation that a large number of people inside the companies are actually trying to improve what they are doing.)

Some claim that Japanese culture lends itself to the kind of operation that Toyota has, and the US culture does not lend itself to this. Taiichi Ohno, Continue reading →