In the articles section, there is a great interview Art Smalley had with Toyota veteran Ike Kato called Shigeo Shingo's Influence on TPS, in which Kato downplays Shingo's role and pumps up Ohno's contribution. John Miller over at Gemba Panta Rei has been writing a fascinating series on the early development of TPS taken largely from Ohno's writing. Shingo wrote his own books on the matter with a different version. Of course, Henry Ford wrote about his development of the assembly line, as did Charles Sorenson.
Anyone who has read my book knows that I am fascinated with history - especially the history of manufacturing and the evolution of lean. I have read just about everything I can get my hands on about Toyota, Ford, GM and the other great manufacturers. My advice to you when you read the reminisces of the manufacturing greats: Believe about ten percent of it.
Egos are funny things. The true contributions of Shingo and Ohno, Ford and Sorenson are awe inspiring. They had ideas and made decisions that changed the world. Yet, for some reason, they all feel the need to exaggerate and overstate their personal contribution to the success of their companies. Henry Ford did not 'invent' the assembly line. He was probably not even in the building the day it first came to life. Equally nonsensical is Sorenson's often repeated tale of a chassis being pulled through the Mack Avenue plant on a Sunday morning in 1908. For Sorenson's story to be true, they must have learned nothing from the experience. The assembly line came to life six years later in a different plant.
I believe the part of the Kato interview in which he says that Shingo had little personal, hands on involvement in the implementation of the TPS. I also believe the part where he says that Shingo trained thousands of industrial engineers who did the actual work of making the TPS a reality. I do not believe for one minute a yarn about Ohno seeing a grocery store, having a 'Eureka' moment, and running back to Toyota to personally implement the kanban system.
These guys were senior people in very big companies with very full schedules. There were not enough hours in any of their lifetimes to have personally done a fraction of the things for which they have grabbed credit. Kanban took better than twelve years from concept to a reasonable semblance of its final form at Toyota. Had Ohno devoted a significant amount of time over a twelve year span to kanban, he never would have met his bigger management responsibilities, and he would have languished in middle management his entire career. Henry Ford was the Chairman and CEO of a company with 14,000 employees and plants spread across the country when the assembly line sprang to life. How much time would the CEO of your company devote to a shop floor engineering project?
The popular press falls for those stories, but manufacturing people know better. It takes time to put in a single kanban. There is a lot of arithmetic to do, people to talk to, procedures to develop How many kanbans do you suppose Toyota has - or had back then? Thousands? Tens of thousands? And a guy at a Director level personally did all of that math and developed all of those procedures, specified all of those container sizes, designed all of those bin labels?
The point of all of this is that old men worrying about their legacies when they write their memoirs seem to be a natural fact of life. How far did your grandfather have to walk through snow how deep uphill both ways to get to school? The difficulty it presents for the current lean community is that it creates the impression that lean is the product of individual genius. We get this image of the early Ford plant or the later Toyota plant running pretty much like every other plant until one day, in a blinding flash of genius, some guy that makes Einstein look like an idiot has the idea that changes everything. We are led to believe that lean somehow depends on our CEO duplicating that magical moment that will enable a sudden transformation from the manufacturing past to lean. An event like Dorothy's house landing on the witch will happen - and our plant will go from the grainy black and white of the old to a brilliantly colored world of happily singing employees.
It didn't happen that way at Ford or Toyota, and it is not going to happen that way at your plant.
What really happened at Ford was that Henry Ford and James Couzens created a management infrastructure driven by cash flow. Their entire management system put relentless pressure on the organization to continually reduce cycle times and increase throughput. That environment drove hundreds of people to come up with innovative ways to eliminate defects and put everything in motion. Ford, Couzens and Sorenson deserve great credit for vision and leadership - management - but not for industrial engineering.
The same thing happened at Toyota. The Toyoda family - Eiji and Kiichiro, even the old man Sakachi, - set in place a cash driven management system. JIT was the natural extension of their principles. Ohno, Shingo and a host of others had ideas and insights that furthered the company's pursuit of the Toyoda management goals. They were communicators, educators and browbeaters; and they energized hundreds of Toyota industrial engineers to make the changes that ultimately became the TPS.
It will happen at your company the same way. Sooner or later, the senior people will define the objectives, structure the organization and put in the metrics that will start to drive people to pursue projects based on lean principles. It will be like turning a battleship around in a river and you will not know when it began or when it ended. Eventually, however, you will realize that your company is lean, and you won't even know when it changed.
Then, of course, you will go on to spend your golden years on a rocking chair at the retirement home telling the young folks how it was all your idea and that you did all the work.
Oh, yeah - the title. Cyrus McCormick did not invent the reaper. A family slave by the name of Jo Anderson, a blacksmith and mechanical wizard of sorts, did. Old Cyrus was a great salesman and entrepreneur, but he seemed to forget that detail when he wrote about events later in life. So here is to Jo Anderson, and the thousands of production workers, supervisors and engineers, lost to history, who really deserve the credit for creating what we know as lean manufacturing!
Evolving Excellence
I wanted to make a few comments concerning the history of the development of the Toyota Production System. After reading Eiji's Autobiography and Taiichi Ono's three books and several of Shigeo Shingo's books, I think the system was pretty well developed just as they all have stated. I don't think any of them are prone to excessive boasting or of being revisionist. They all just don't seem to be that type. I don't think it is right to imply that Taiichi Ono had a mid level management job that kept him from the hands on development of the system. To Onosan's way of thinking, the main responsibility he had was the development of a system which would provide a superior competitive advantage to Toyota. That's why he spent a great deal of his time on the plant floors of Toyota for much of his 40 years and not in some cushy corporate office pushing paperwork. Onosan expended a great deal of personal energy at the plant floor level in the development of the Toyota Production System. He even states that in the early years of trying to implement the system, there were many who were opposed to his efforts and many more who simply didn't understand and were worried he would do something to ruin the company. In those early years (early 1950's, the system was known as the abominable Ono system), it wasn't called the Toyota Production system until the superior performance of the system had been validated (around 1960). From what I have been able to gleen from all of these books, the full development of TPS took the best ideas and efforts of Sakichi, Kiichiro, Eiji, Taiichi and also Shigeo Shingo. Onosan gave Shingo proper credit for the development of SMED. Eiji noted that Taiichi was the developer of the Kanban method of JIT implementation at Toyota. Kanban was the method of implementing the JIT idea which apparently had originated with Kiichiro. Eiji says that Kiichiro never told him where he came up with the idea for JIT. But it is clear that Kiichiro tried to implement the main pillars of the Toyota Production System (Jidoka and JIT) prior to the War. Onosan notes that while working at Toyoda loom works, he was exposed to Sakichi's Jidoka idea built into the power looms. Onosan even noted that the Jidoka idea was not being utilized as originally intended at Toyoda loom. Eiji also talks about teaching Kiichiro's JIT classes himself and how impressive Kiichiro's training manuals were, a full four inches thick. Taiichi Ono gives Sakichi credit for the original Jidoka idea and he also says that JIT originated with Kiichiro. Because of Kiichiro's death in the early 1950's, Eiji was left to run the company with the help of Taiichi Ono and several others. From what I can gather, Eiji must have had enough conviction because of the early exposure to the JIT idea from Kiichiro to risk the company in order to fully develop the system. It was Taiichi Ono who became the hands on developer of the system. The floor level integrator and tinker who took all of the ideas and made them work together to form a cohesive system. Onosan used Sakichi's Jidoka idea and Kiichiro's JIT concept and he found a way using the Kanban cards to create pull and leveled production (American Supermarket Inspiration). Onosan implemented TPS on a trial and error basis. Taiichi Ono is very clear in his books about the development of the system. He also describes the initial exposure to the USA Supermarket. It was not Onosan who initially visited the Supermarket in the USA. It was other Toyota Higher ups, perhaps Eiji or Kiichiro who had visited America soon after the War and brought back the stories of the American Supermarket. This intrigued Onosan and supposedly gave him the idea of the downstream processes going to the upstream processes to get only what parts were needed when they were needed. It was not until several years later that Onosan himself got to go to America and see the Supermarket for himself. Well after the Kanban and pull ideas had been formulated. While I am sure that there were many Toyota employees, managers, and engineers who were equally dedicated, I think Taiichi Ono deserves recognition as the person who made all of the good ideas work together in a systematic way.
Shigeo Shingo also deserves a lot of credit for the ideas that he developed. Shingo spent just as much time in Quality, although not at Toyota as Taiichi Ono spent working upon the Toyota System. Shingo pretty well discredits the Mass Production idea of Sampling and SPC used on product after production has already occurred. Shingo's source inspection and error proofing methods allowed many Japanese companies to produce high quality products with little waste. Something Mass production systems using SPC cannot accomplish.
The Ford Mass Production system does not posses the critical elements which Onosan consolidated into the Toyota Production System. The Ford system while initially embracing the idea of the moving conveyor belt bringing parts as they were needed for assembly, somehow abandoned it by the mid 1930's. The Ford system never possessed the Jidoka idea. The Ford system therefore did not prevent the creation of defective product in a systematic way. Ford also never developed fully the ideas of the many wastes associated with overproduction. Taiichi Ono not only developed fully the wastes associated with overproduction, but he actually put in place a system which has proven through performance over time that he was indeed correct.
Posted by: Barry Huff | 18 April 2006 at 10:11 PM
I beg to differ with your characterization of the Ford system. In the 1910's and 1920's, Ford turned inventory and achieved throughput that Toyota has never come close to realizing. The notion that Ford did not fully develop the idea of waste of overproduction is patently untrue. The quality system at Ford in Highland Park was an extraordinary advancement, and far more significant in the success of Ford and the Model T than moving conveyors.
Toyota added only two elements to the Ford system: Kanban/andon to synchronize flow, and far more important, SMED. The TPS is very much a clone of the Ford system with the huge exception of Toyota's ability to produce multiple variations of a product, while Ford was stuck with 'any color so long as it is black'
And the Ford system collapsed in the 1940's - not the 1930's. The history of the TPS is relatively dull and unimportant. It was taken lock, stock and barrel from the Ford system, then improved by pull and SMED. Far more important is the historical question of GMs failure to adopt the Ford system, and Ford's eventual abandonment of it.
Toyota beat GM the day they decided to adopt the Ford system and GM opted for the Sloan system. It has just been a matter of time before Toyota beat GM. If you want to know how that came about, you're just gonna have to read my book.
Posted by: Bill Waddell | 19 April 2006 at 11:42 AM
A few more comments Bill. I will admit I don't know the history of the Ford System perhaps as well as you might. However, If that system along with the management who created it were superior to Toyota, then Ford would be running circles around Toyota as we speak. The last time I checked, that in fact wasn't the case. But the group of Management at Ford were unable to transfer the DNA of the system and the original management philosophy to those that took over after them. Toyota has not had that problem to date. It is a vast simplification to say that the Toyota production system is just a simple extension of the Ford System. The original Jidoka idea is a very significant reason why JIT is possible. After all who cares if you can level production and deliver product Just in Time if at the end of the day, the product produced is defective. This idea is not a part of the Mass production systems as espoused by Ford. As someone who has studied Quality for over 20 years, I find that the West misses the importance of the Jidoka idea. Toyota developed that idea from the early days of Toyoda loom works.
Posted by: Barry Huff | 19 April 2006 at 12:19 PM
The points you raise are of vital importance, Barry. Please don't allow yourself to be satisfied with clever, but meaningless, phrases like 'the DNA' of the Toyota or the Ford systems. Businesses do not have DNA - organisms do. That is a silly phrase invented and used by people who have not been able to understand the matters in factual, business terms.
You are very much on the right track.
Don't take my word for it listen to Ohno, who said "I think that if the American king of cars [Ford] were still alive, he would be headed in the same direction as Toyota"
Or better yet, listen to Shingo, "Toyota system is not a system opposed to Ford system, but rather enlarged and progressed the Ford system."
Don't be fooled by the myths about Ford and 'mass production'. Ohno and Shingo gave credit to the Ford system, but neither of them was talking about 'assembly lines'. You cannot read Henry Ford's book, "Today and Tomorrow" and be left with any doubt as to the origin of the Toyota Production System.
Sakichi Toyoda was in the US in 1910 and saw the Model T. Kiichiro Toyoda spent 3 months at Ford in 1929 learning the Ford system. Eiji Toyoda came to Detroit in 1950 to see it - but is was coming apart by then. They all read Ford's book. Kiichiro and Eiji both saw the Model T assembly plant in Yokahama. Don't kid yourself into thinking that the TPS is a product of Toyoda family DNA or Japanese culture.
It makes no sense for Ford to have abandoned lean, does it? But somehow, it happened.
The question of why "the group of Management at Ford were unable to transfer the DNA of the system and the original management philosophy to those that took over after them" should be very, very important, shouldn't it?
The reasons for the death of lean manufacturing at Ford are the very same reasons American companies find it so hard to become lean today. And the key to becoming lean lies in undoing the mistake made at Ford that caused them to abandon it.
Lean died in America in 1946 - a move Fortune Magazine announced as putting "the GM organization garment on the Ford manufacturing frame". Snce then, no American manufacturer has been able to compete with Toyota, or any lean company, while wearing the "GM organizational garment."
If you fall for the Toyota DNA myth, you will keep looking for the key to lean in the Toyota DNA and you will never find it. The key to becoming lean lies in discovering why Ford went from lean to their current state, and seeing what changed.
Posted by: Bill Waddell | 19 April 2006 at 01:50 PM
A few more comments. I have been studying Quality for a significant portion of my life. As a matter of fact that's how I stumbled upon the lean concepts to start with. I read the Womack and Jones book "The Machine that changed the World" back when it came out. I will be the first to admit, I don't really have a great deal of admiration for Mr. Ford. He may have been an innovator from a system standpoint, but he certainly had many personal biases.
In order to clarify my thoughts, lets remove all of the Business Jargon like DNA from what I am about to say.
Eiji Toyoda describes in some detail about Toyota's dealings with Ford. I have loaned my book to someone else to read now. But basically Toyota on four occasions proposed Joint ventures with Ford and nothing ever came of it. Eiji even said that Ford lacked a lot in the way they handled the dealings with Toyota and that Ford left them with a bad impression. In other words Ford dealt with Toyota in a disrespectful manner. Ishida, Toyota's president for a time after the War was furious with Ford concerning their blatant disrespect in their business dealings with Toyota. Toyota is probably better off not having any formal association with the Ford Motor company.
Concerning the ability to transfer Management and production/process control technology and advance that technology from one generation of leaders to another, Toyota has done a stellar job and Ford quite obviosly has not. This is a vital part of making sure a company survives into the future. I don't really care why Ford failed to promote and develop their own system. But even if they had, I doubt they would have created the entire system that is now the Toyota Production System. I think that Toyota would have simply outworked the Ford people and been quicker to each milestone. It's much easier to stay in touch with what is going on when you do things like Taiichi Ono and stay on the plant floor. I suspect the Ford people would have had a hard time leaving the Ivory Tower so to speak and that would have slowed their progress considerably.
I also believe there is a bias in the West that everything is invented in America and Japan has just copied it and made small changes. I think Sakichi's Jidoka idea as implemented in the early 1900's is an example of creative thinking. Shigeo Shingo also did a lot of good and creative things.
In my opinion there is more to winning in the market place than just operating your production system using a Lean rather than Mass Production system. Onosan even talks about this in his last book. What good does it do to manufacture High quality products in the most efficient manner, if you don't connect with the customer and then nobody buys your product. Onosan even says they concluded this was the biggest waste of all and represented the greatest loss to society. You can now think of a whole host of Cars which have been dismal failures in the market place (Most have not been Toyotas, although no company is immune)
Kaoro Ishikawa said that it takes 10 years for a company to build up a good reputation with a customer. A reputation such that the customer will not only return but perhaps pass along a recommendation about the product to others. Kaoro also stressed that even a good reputation which was won over a long period of time and good performance could be lost overnight. I have all of the quotes for what I am saying, I can post them if you like. It makes you wonder how long it might take to get a reputation back after you have lost it ???
You see being lean is only part of it. In my opinion, from a Quality Assurance standpoint, the product quality is much more important at the end of the day. I have yet to see a single written and documented account of how Henry Ford or anyone else at Ford came up with the Jidoka Idea as built into the Toyoda Looms in the early 1900's. The Critical part of the Toyota production system is that it contains the Jidoka idea and that the Quality is Assured at the process level. This in fact is what facilitates the other parts of the system. After all without Jidoka, how can you be certain your product will meet the Quality Expectations of the end user. You certainly cannot do that using the Western view of Quality espoused by Deming and Shrewhart (i.e, Sampling and SPC). Read Shigeo Shingo's book "Zero Quality Control" He does a very good job explaining what he learned over the years.
The reason Toyota is winning is not because they focus solely upon LEAN, no Toyota does not suboptimize in that way. The reason Toyota is winning is because they have a Quality Assurance system which ensures the Quality is built into the product at the process level and this greatly facilitates the value of JIT. The use of the many layers of Jidoka ensure that when something is wrong, it is highlighted and everyone knows about it. But Toyota doesn't just suboptimize around product quality either.
Toyota also does all of the things that you need to do to give a customer the product they want. Toyota researches customer needs very well. I might add that Honda does this extremely well also.
The easiest way to create a Lean Manufacturing system is to know that at every step of the way, you are creating good product and that if you aren't you will immediately know about it. After all, if all of the product moving along the lines is good, it becomes much easier to lean things out. Cycle times are more certain, yields are high, flow and pull becomes much easier. Variability in the Quality of the product is a critical component. I feel that it is more important perhaps than any other factor.
The critical component that Ford and the West have missed is detailed by Shingo in Zero QC and was implemented by Onosan. If you can show me evidence that it was done SYSTEMATICALLY AT FORD first, then I would like to see it. If they had not missed this critical point, then it would have been very hard for Toyota and Honda to have had any success in penetrating the US market over these 40 + years.
The Big Three are still advocating Sampling and SPC and only recently included the Error proofing concepts in the last revision of the PFMEA manual. It clearly is still not understood as being a pillar for producing a High Quality Product.
Toyota knows the lowest cost product is the one that passes unimpeded through their JIT system. That's what Jidoka does. It speeds up the improvement cycle for finding the root cause of the problem. It also ensures that problems are known about quickly. Sampling will not do that at a level which will guarantee that a single customer does not recieve a defective product.
So while someone might match Toyota on some aspects of their performance, without Jidoka, they will unlikely be able to match Toyota in the area of Customer retention or in the battle to win market share.
Toyota also has cleverly used Designed Experiments over many years to determine how to make their parts more reliable and last longer than the Big Three. I suppose I invite wrath here, but the old wives tale about Henry Ford going to Junk Yards to see what parts outlasted the car and then telling the supplier to make it last a shorter period of time and reduce the cost is just the opposite of Toyota's viewpoint. I have no idea if this is in fact true or not, but it illustrates the point of just designing a part to a fixed reliability target and focusing upon cost rather than the ultimate satisfaction of the customer. When GM wanted to improve their component reliability and warranty performance back in 2000, they hired the retired Toyota manager. He worked as a consultant for GM for several years. Toyota has figured out that the best thing to do is to give the customer superior value (high quality and good long term reliability) by knowing how to control your processes with certaintly and at the same time making the product robust to end usage conditions. When you do this and price your product at the levels of the Mass production guys, you gain market share and make lots of profit.
The other thing that is important besides Manufactured Quality is the Design and Styling of the product. How appealing is it to the market. This is where I think Toyota could improve, but they are doing that. So is Honda and even Hyundai.
Don't believe that Lean is the entire part of Toyota's success. You can suboptimize around just the concept of Lean and in the end not win market share. Toyota has been particularly good at doing all of this and many other things extremely well.
While it may be argued I suppose that one of the pillars of the Toyota Production system (JIT) is attributable directly to Ford, I have not seen any evidence to suggest that the most important pillar, Jidoka was in any way connected to Ford.
Shingo makes very clear the differences between the Western approach to Quality and the Japanese approach in his book Zero QC.
Posted by: Barry Huff | 19 April 2006 at 03:35 PM
Barry, you keep acknowledging that you know nothing about Ford - and don't care to know - then go back to worshipping at the altar of Toyota. I can't help you, buddy. Management doesn't get handed down from one generation to the next like your grandma's dishes. If you don't learn the management systems and processes that cause companies to succeed or fail, then you will never be more than a passionate believer in ideas, but not someone who gets results. Good luck.
Posted by: Bill Waddell | 19 April 2006 at 04:02 PM
Well thats a nice response Bill. It sounds like to me you are worshiping at the Ford altar. Just in case you haven't noticed, they are closing Plants and aren't doing all that well. As a matter of fact, there was an article in Automotive news not all that long ago that discussed how Ford had lost almost a million sales since 2000. GM who you like to criticize so much only lost 400 odd thousand. So much for the Ford Altar. I am not worshiping at the Toyota altar, just trying to participate in the blog. Thought it might be interesting. I am not sure it is though. Being opionated doesn't make you an expert. You also can't tell what I will or will not do with my knowledge of these things in the future. You state that management doesn't get handed down, but in fact many components of it do. At least in some of the Family ran businesses it most certainly does. Both Toyota and Ford have strong family associations. I suppose when you are speaking about getting results, you might want to take that on the road to some big consultant conferences. Those guys are notorious for getting big money out of companies and then vanishing when things don't work out. Hope you arent' one of those guys. And lastly, I am not your buddy : )
Posted by: Barry Huff | 19 April 2006 at 05:27 PM
Gimme a break, Barry. I spent 15 years researching this stuff and wrote a book about it. You certainly have a good handle on jidoka and Toyota's quality philosophy, but reading the collected works of the Toyoda's, Ohno and Shingo, along with The Machine That Changed The World hardly qualifes you as an expert.
The Toyoda founders were geniuses - especially Eiji - but don't kid yourself, and please do not try to kid me into thinking that there was not a self serving element in what you read.
You wrote, "Because of Kiichiro's death in the early 1950's, Eiji was left to run the company..." Do you really believe that? Kiichiro was a great man who did a great job and was responsible for bringing Toyota back from the ashheap of World War II. But the fact is that Toyota almost went under in 1950, laid off 1/3 of its employees and took on a very ugly strike. Kiichiro was kicked out as a result, and he died a few years later. Eiji took over because his cousin, Kiichiro, was fired, not because he died, and proved to be the most brilliant of all the Toyoda's .
There is nothing you wrote that I did not read or come across in my research before writing Rebirth of American Industry. When you come at me with statements like the above, coupled with nonsense about Henry Ford in junkyards - what junkyard would that be, Barry? Ford created his manufacturing systems in the 1910's and 1920's and there were not enough cars built and worn out prior to then to have any in junkyards - coupled with repeating the stories the Toyodas et al wrote about their great personal exploits, you don't swing much weight.
The Machine That Changed The World was a very important book in the evolution of lean manufacturing, but it is hardly the last word on manufacturing history. Henry Ford was a miserable, crappy human being - especially late in his life. Guess what? So were Sakichi Toyoda and Taichi Ohno. Their personal shorcomings have nothing to do with their contributions to manufacturing.
I respect your passion, Barry, but not your objectivity. Learning takes place when you are open to seeing what Toyota and Ford did well, and where they failed. If you go into it only opening yourself to seeing and believing the good about Toyota and the bad about Ford, you will never be able to understand the big picture.
You can find my email address by clicking on my profile at the top of the page on the right. Send me your address and I will be glad to send you a copy of my book. After you've read it, if you want to challenge either the facts in it, or the conclusions I drew from those facts, I will be more than happy to engage in the debate with you.
Until then, please tone down the lectures and insults.
Posted by: Bill Waddell | 20 April 2006 at 04:58 AM