Toyota Production System (Part I of II)

"The practical expression of Toyota's people and customer-oriented philosophy is known as the Toyota Production System (TPS). This is not a rigid company-imposed procedure but a set of principles that have been proven in day-to-day practice over many years. Many of these ideas have been adopted and imitated all over the world." - Toyota Website

This is the first paragraph in the Toyota website describing what the Toyota Production System, or TPS  is. As stated in the website, these principles were studied and adopted worldwide, by many companies trying to understand and replicate the success of this system. Many other systems and methodologies were born from TPS, Lean Manufacturing being the most famous. It is important to differentiate at this point Lean and TPS. Although there are a few discussions on the subject, the most accepted concept is that TPS is the precursor of the more generic Lean Manufacturing. For more information on Lean, there is a post discussing its principles in this blog here.

The history of the TPS goes back to Sakishi Toyoda, in the year of 1896. Sakishi developed a loom machine with automatic stop mechanism. This was the remote principle of Jidoka, allowing an automatic machine that could be stopped by human intervention. This was a very important step towards quality, that the Toyota would maintain until these days. The concepts of flow and JIT were first introduced by Kiichiro Toyoda when he designed a production method using a chain conveyor into the assembly line of a textile plant, in 1927. Later in 1938, Kiichiro introduced the same system in the body production line at Toyota Motor Co. Those were mechanisms used by Toyota Motor Co., but was under Eiji Toyota and Taiichi Ohno that the TPS become the philosophy that we know today as TPS.

The TPS is based in 14 principles divided in 4 different sessions.

Principle 1. Base your management decisions on a long term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals.

This is probably the most important aspect in TPS. It represents the company's culture and how this culture is shared and observed by every worker and partner. It is something that is present from the company's CEO office to every plant floor, in every location. It is there to guide decisions and set expectations of every single person involved in this enterprise. Generate value for the customer, society, and the economy. This is the starting point where every function in the company is evaluated in terms of its ability to achieve it.
The great importance of this principle make me choose to create a blog post dedicated to discuss it. You can find it here.

Principle 2. Create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface.

 Most business process are full of waste. Create a continuous flow of information or material, will help to identify and reduce the waste in a process. 

Flow means that when your customer places an order, this triggers the process of obtaining the raw materials needed just for that customer's order. The raw materials then flow immediately to supplier plants, where workers immediately fill the order with components, which flow immediately to a plant, where workers assemble the order, and then the complete orders flow to the costumer.  - The Toyota Way 

 In the core of the continuous flow process is the One-Piece Flow and the Takt Time, that works as a heart beat for it.
Takt is the rate of customer demand. If customer demands is 3600 pieces per month, and the factory works 7 hours a day, 22 days per month, your Takt time will be 154 seconds per piece (554400 worked seconds in a month, divided by the 3600 pieces required in the same month). This means that, in order to achieve a continuous flow, every step in the one-piece flow should spend 154 seconds. If the step is going in a faster pace, they will end up overproducing (waste), and if the step is going too slow, they will become a bottleneck, accumulating inventory (waste). Takt time is used to measure the work in each production step, detect issues and help to solve them.
One-piece flow is also an important element in the flow creation. The idea of one-piece flow is that no step in the production can produce any part unless that is required by the next step. In order to make flow process possible inside production, a U shape one piece flow cell unit concept was developed by Toyota. The idea was to have in one production cell, all the steps required to build a product, and that the work flow from station to station with minimum waste.

A production environment can have multiple cells.

In the end, creating flow helps to eliminate waste (muda) and unevenness (muda).

Principle 3. Use "pull" systems to avoid overproduction

The best definition for a Pull System that I could find states that is a method of controlling the flow of resources by replacing only what has been consumed, and produce no more than what is already ordered. Toyota usually says that the goal of a pull system is to provide your customer with what they want, when they want it, and in the amount they want. No more, no less.

This system avoids the creation of big inventory buffers, that is also considered waste (muda) by Toyota. Taiichi Ohno use to say that the more inventory a company has, the less likely they will have what they need.

One important point is to admit that zero inventory and one-piece flow are not easy systems to master. Some companies will take a long time, improving their processes in order to approach those ideal models, and sometimes they will come to realize that, for their business model, some level of buffer are acceptable and necessary. Rother and Shook in their book, Learning to See (1999) stated "Flow where you can, pull where you must." What is important is to ensure that those buffers have a small size and are replenished by pull system (only when the buffer reach a low level you refill the buffer).

In the Toyota line, this concept was implemented using bins with a color code in the bottom. A station would have two bins filled with a specific part. When one of the bins become empty, they would send it to refill. The code in the bottom of the bin would give the instructions of which part should be filled and where to deliver it. This way, the station would always have the parts required to perform work without the need for a large inventory. They called this card system kanban. Kanban, inside Toyota, are cards and signs that help to signal events and requests on the production line. This days, Toyota will often use a computer system for scheduling some operations, but then use manual cues like cards or white boards to visually control the process.

Principle 4. Level Out the Workload (Heijunka)

One of the goals of the TPS is to eliminate waste. Toyota managers and employees use three japanese words to define waste:

• Muda - Non-value-added. In the production line, there are 8 types of muda:
• Transport
• Inventory
• Motion
• Waiting
• Overproducing
• Overprocessing
• Defects
• Mnemonics
• Muri - Overburdening people or equipment. Overburdening people results in safety and quality problems. Overburdening equipment causes breakdowns and defects.
• Mura - Unevenness. Unevenness on production implies that there will be overburden periods and periods of underuse.

Having starts and stops, overutilization then underutilization, is a problem because it does not lend itself to quality, standardization of work, productivity, or continuous improvement.

Heijunka is the leveling of production by both volume and product mix. It does not build products according to the actual flow of customer orders, which can swing up and down wildly, but takes the total volume of orders in a period and levels them out so the same amount and mix are being made each day. 

Principle 5. Build a Culture of Stopping to Fix Problems, to Get the Quality Right the First Time.

Jidoka traces back to Sakichi Toyoda and his loom. Amoung his improvements was a device that detected when a thread broke and, when it did, it would stop the loom at once. The idea was to solve the problem right away before move production on. Quality should be built in. This means that a method to detect problems when they occur and stop production to fix the issue should be present. If not, the defect will continues downstream.

Another important aspect of jidoka is autonomation. Autonomation is the power that every employee have to make a decision to stop the line when he detects something unusual or wrong. Toyota says that In-station quality (when the problems can't move upstream in the flow) is much more effective and less costly than inspecting and repairing quality problems in a later station up in the flow, or even have to deal with a low quality product in the end of the process.

When the line was stopped, a light signal would be ligt to point in what part of the flow the issue was originated. This signalling is called andon, and represents a call for help. In the Toyota line, the first andon would not stop the whole cell. It would stop one station. The team leader would have one takt to respond before the andon becomes red and stops the cell. If the teamleader can fix the issue or determined that the line does not need to stop to fix the problem, he can push the button again to cancel the andon.

Another tool used to detect issues on the stations are what the japanese call Poka-Yoke. Poka-Yoke is a mechanism in the station that helps an equipment operator (yokero) to avoid mistakes (poka).

Principle 6. Standardized Tasks Are the Foundation for Continuous Improvement and Employee Empowerment.

There in no improvement without standardization. This is Masaaki Imai's message in his book Gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense, Low-Cost Approach to Management.

A standard is a set of instructions, formulas and information that describes how to operate a process.

A standard is a living document and should be updated under two circumstances  a better routine to conduct the process is discovered and must be attached or adapted to the standard, or an error lead to a standard revision which recommended a change to avoid the recurrence of the error.

More on standards, according to Imai:

• Standards represents the best, easier and safest way to do a job.
• Offer the best way to preserve know-how and expertize.  
• Provide a way to measure performance.  
• Show the relationship between cause and effect. 
• Provide basis for both maintenance and improvement.
• provide objectives and indicate training goals.
• Provide a basis for training.
• Create a basis for audits and diagnosis.
• Provide a means for preventing recurrence of errors and minimizing variability.

Another important aspect of the standard lies in the ability to empower the employee that operates the process. Because the operator is the person with the most familiarity with the process, he is the most indicated person to propose improvements to the process. Standards have to be specific enough to be useful guides, yet general enough to allow for some flexibility. This flexibility is the entry point for continuous improvement in the standard.

Principle 7. Use Visual Controls So No Problems are Hidden

A clean environment improves visibility. In Japan, the Toyota factories were all very organized and clean. This was an effect of another TPS tool: The 5S program. This program are a series of activities that aim to eliminate waste in the workplace. Each S was originally a japanese word that ended up translated to english:

• Seri or Sort - Keep only what is really necessary to do the work. All other items are distractions and potential sources for accidents.
• Seiton or Straighten - It is about how organized your work environment is. "A place for everything and everything in its place"
• Seiso or Shine - Keep it clean. In a clean environment is easier to detect problems. Also, the process of cleaning is also a good inspection process.
• Seiketsu or Standardize - Develop processes to ensure the first 3 Ss are being applied.
• Shitsuke or Sustain - Ensure that the workplace is kept organized and clean at all times. Audit the environment regularly.

There is a story that a group of Japanese managers came to US to visit a potential partnership with a vendor. When the Japanese arrived, the vendor had already organized an schedule for the day, starting with a long presentation about the company and the product. The japanese managers insisted to skip the presentation and asked to be taken right away to the factory (Gemba). Once arriving there, it took them less then 15 minutes to come to a decision. When they told the vendor that it would not be possible to do business with them, the vendor asked why. The answer was simple: You do not understand 5s. So you can not understand TPS. This represents how important 5S is to TPS.

Visual controls are broadly used in the workplace, from the assembly line to the offices. The idea is to make information available just by looking. One of the most important visual controls from Toyota is the Obeya. Obeya is a large room that received information from different systems and metrics and have this information available in large monitors inside the room. It is used to help decision making based on the informations available. 

"A well-developed visual control system increases productivity, reduces defects and mistakes, helps to meet deadlines, facilitates communication, improves safety, lower costs, and generally gives the workers more control over their environment" - The Toyota Way.

Principle 8. Use Only Reliable, Thoroughly Tested Technology That Serves Your People and Processes

For Toyota, the process to adopt a new technology requires a long period of evaluation and trials. One of the important aspects analyzed is regarding the impact of the new technology. If no value is added, the idea is just discarded. It is necessary to verify that real value will be added to the product, people or processes before it can be adopted. Another aspect of great importance is around the cultural aspect. Toyota will not adopt a technology that conflicts with it's philosophies and operation principles. Above all, Toyota look at technology as a tool, and as any other tool, it is there to support the process and the people who operates it.

Before it can be adopted, a process must be created and implemented manually, to verify efficiency and functional aspect.

"First work out the manual process, and then automate it. Try to build into the system as much flexibility as you possibly can so you can continue to kaizen the process as your business changes. And always supplement the system information with "genchi genbutsu" or "go look, go see". - The Toyota Way.

It is too long for one post...lets split in two posts and make it easier for both the reader and for me :).
to be continued...

Lean.

Before we start to discuss how to use Lean and TPS principles in IT support and IT infrastructure, it is necessary to understand it first. So, we will have two blogposts that will aim to give an understanding on Lean and TPS before we can move on. This first post will focus on Lean.

I remember the first time I saw "the lean house", I could not understand it. It was the drawing of a house, with a floor, a roof and two pillars. The roof was representing things you would like to achieve. One pillar represents the flow while the other represents the process. In the base, is the continuous quest for quality. This is a very simplified description of it. The original drawing was a bit more complex, as we can see below.

The Lean House used to teach lean principles

This was first used by the lean founders to explain the coherence and harmony of the Lean System.

The foundations of the house are build over muda reduction and kaizen. The word muda translates as waste in english. The elimination of waste is considered one of the very important steps in the lean methodology. Kaizen can be translated as continuous improvement. Those are the two elements where everything is built over. Waste elimination and continuous improvement.

The seven wastes identified in Lean manufacture are:

• Transport
• Inventory
• Motion
• Waiting
• Overprocessing
• Defects

One of the systems created to reduce the waste was the 5S. 5S is a system to reduce waste and optimize productivity through maintaining an orderly workplace and using visual cues to achieve more consistent operational results. Implementation of this method "cleans up" and organizes the workplace basically in its existing configuration, and it is typically the first lean method which organizations implement.
The 5S pillars, Sort (Seiri), Set in Order (Seiton), Shine (Seiso), Standardize (Seiketsu), and Sustain (Shitsuke), provide a methodology for organizing, cleaning, developing, and sustaining a productive work environment. In the daily work of a company, routines that maintain organization and orderliness are essential to a smooth and efficient flow of activities. This lean method encourages workers to improve their working conditions and helps them to learn to reduce waste, unplanned downtime, and in-process inventory.

Lean production is founded on the idea of kaizen – or continual improvement. This philosophy implies that small, incremental changes routinely applied and sustained over a long period result in significant improvements. The kaizen strategy aims to involve workers from multiple functions and levels in the organization in working together to address a problem or improve a process. The team uses analytical techniques, such as value stream mapping and "the 5 whys", to identify opportunities quickly to eliminate waste in a targeted process or production area. The team works to implement chosen improvements rapidly (often within 72 hours of initiating the kaizen event), typically focusing on solutions that do not involve large capital outlays.

Periodic follow-up events aim to ensure that the improvements from the kaizen "blitz" are sustained over time.

The pillar in the left, have its base as heijunka. Heijunka translates as continuous or smooth sequencing.  Which means that the ideal work is always constant, and that variation in production should also be eliminated. Heijunka focus is to reduce the mura (uneveness) and by doing that, also reduce muda (waste).

In the same pillar we also have "Pull System", where production aims to make only the parts required by client orders (on demand). 

Based on the orders, a Takt time is calculated and measured against the cycle time of every part of the manufacturing process. The Takt time is the relation between time and client demand. Once calculated this is divided in all processes of the production, and have the goal to set the rhythm of the production. Whenever a difference in the flow appear, kaizen is used to correct the flow. It also ensures that the flow will be constant, helping to achieve heijunka.

Comparison between Takt time and Cycle time during manufacturing process.

The last element of this pillar is JIT or Just-in-Time. It focus on muda elimination by reducing the amount of goods and materials in stock. The idea is to have parts and partial products ready for the next process only when they are required, reducing the amount of inventory in each process. This concept is very align with the pull system.

This first pillar is very focused on the flow. It helps to guide how the work moves from one station to the next station, from one process to the next. The next pillar examines in more detail what should happen within the stations, focusing in the process of each production phase.

Standardize work is critical inside Lean. If you do not have a standardized process, then you can not have Kaizen in that process. The TPS principle #6 states "Standardized tasks and processes are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment." Use of stable, repeatable methods everywhere is the key to maintain the predictability, regular timing and regular output of your processes. Allowing people that work with the process to suggest improvements, and then incorporate those improvements to the standard is what will ensure the continuous improvement of the process.

The oldest part of the production system is the concept of Jidoka which was created in 1902 by Toyoda founder Sakichi Toyoda. This concept pertains to notion of building in quality at the production process as well as enabling separation of man and machine for multi-process handling. A group of machines would be handled by an human operator, capable of making intelligent decisions and shutting down automatically at the first sign of an abnormal condition. When the line was stopped, the problem was solved in the immediate condition, but a team would start to investigate the root cause of the issue, and once detected, a fix would be applied wherever necessary. This stopped the process from create defective material and also enhanced the quality.

Those are the principles of the Lean Process. Next post we will analyze the 14 principles of the Toyota Production System. The understanding of those concepts will allow us to better understand on how to adopt this same methodologies in our IT environment.

Keep it simple.

Simplicity is underestimated.
In order to understand what this really means, we need to first understand another concept: Efficiency.
A lot of people often talk about efficiency, without really understanding the real meaning of it.
According to the Merriam-Webster, "the ability to do something or produce something without wasting materials, time, or energy".
So, if I had to simplify this concept in a few words, I would say that efficiency is to produce without waste.
Now, waste is the spending of any more resource other than the strictly necessary to perform any given action.
In the IT industry, it is often common to people to focus on the technology without looking at the technical cost of it. Technology, does not come for free. A system requires specialists to develop it, deploy it, tune it and then people to maintain and operate it. It is not uncommon for people to create a larger problem from the use of technology than the original issue that technology is being aplied to solve.

Few weeks ago, I had a meeting to present a solution to a problem we had in our environment. The problem was around the meeting rooms. In our company, meeting rooms are shared resources, and often are used by different teams in a daily basis. In each meeting room we have a TV connected to a Mac-Mini, a conference microphone, a webcam and a telephone. With different teams using the resources frequently, it is common to have problems. The solution we found, was to create a card with two sides. One green and one red. In the red side, we have options for people to select where the problem is located. Each card is kept in the door with the green face out. If anybody using the meeting room find an issue, the person just turn the card to the red side and mark the option(s) where he had the issue. When I was explaining the concept, the first reaction that I received was someone saying that they should implement it using a tablet. An application in the tablet would be responsible to call the support team. Ok, lets analyze the suggestion. You need to build a complex application (some will say it is not complex, but when compared to a two color card, even a hello world would be considered complex). Next, you need to ensure that the tablet will be functional at all times. Third, you need to ensure that the connectivity is in place. Another issue, someone needs to be in the support room to pickup the call, otherwise it wont work. Can you see ? Two solutions, both solves the same issue. Look at the difference in complexity. It is a common mistake from people in IT to always try to solve problems using technology.  And this is a larger issue than we actually think.

A solution like this is based on trust. People will use a solution if they trust that solution will solve their problem. If a solution fails to solve the problem, people will stop trusting the solution and, even if you make it right later, people will not use it. A simple solution have a better chance to be used when compared with a complex one.
Technologists love systems and new technologies. They will find all sorts of reasons to justify the usage of the latest piece of tech. If you use technology as a supportive tool for your business, and not as something that will give you a business edge, you need to keep it simple.

Toyota have a very interesting approach to the use of technology. Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and processes. It is normal to implement a process manually before involve technology. This enable people to understand the process making it easier to implement something to automate it. Inside Toyota, new technologies are often seen as unreliable and difficult to standardize and therefore endangers the "flow". People will not replace a technology unless the amount of benefits surpasses the costs. Even when the benefits surpasses the costs, it will face a series of tests to ensure it will perform as planned. The idea to keep supportive systems with low complexity is the closest to efficiency I can imagine an IT area can achieve.
In some ways efficiency is simplicity.
 

here we go...again

After two years of silence, I decided to give another try at this blog.
Still the same subject, but now they finally gave me the opportunity to put all that lean stuff that I studied into work.
I've been looking for this opportunity since I started to study about Lean, more than 2 years ago. So it finally happened.
I've been doing it for the last three months, so I now have stuff to share. What I can say about this last 3 months ? It was the most fantastic experience I ever had in my professional life. The ability to introduce change in an environment and follow up with the effects is mind blowing.
I hope I can share in this blog the same intensity of experience I been living in my every day work.
So, here we go, again.