“You’re doing kaizen in the wrong place!”
This idea jumped out at me as I listened to a recent podcast interview with Jim Womack, who’s book “The Machine that Changed the World” brought lean to the world’s attention in the late 1980s. The host, Katie Anderson, was interviewing him about how he sees the progress of lean in the west since then.
Back then a senior Toyota director pointed out to him that the focus on kaizen that Jim was proposing was misplaced.
One of the keys to Toyota’s success in Production lies not in what goes on in its factories but in its Product develop process.
They take time here to ensure that the requirements of production are fully considered so that the production process operates correctly from start of production and only requires minor finessing rather than major work.
So it’s important to apply kaizen to design and development stages to create a true PRODUCT and PROCESS development system to ensure that the production process was designed to be capable of producing the necessary quality at the required rate and cost.
By taking more time “up front” in the process to ensure all aspects of product lifecycle are considered, production launch and ramp–up happen far more quickly, just as I saw on my recent Japan Study Trip with Katie Anderson.
This thinking is what’s at the at the core of the “Product Lifecycle” training courses my collagues and I run for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers – building on our 35+ years experience of applying this thinking in the UK automotive industry and elsewhere.
So, does your organisation pay enough attention to Process as well as product development? If not, maybe we’ll see you on a course soon.
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Thanks to Katie Anderson for permission to use the clip from the podcast.