TPS - Ohno's Journey

• 1930's Toyota struggled. Japanese market too small, and demand too fragmented. 
• 1950s Eiji Toyoda goes on a 12-week study tour of US plants to study the Ford motor system. 
• After return Toyoda assigns Ohno the task of focus on improving Toyota's production. 
• Realized they need to adopt mass producing mechanism. 
• Ohno
• Benchmarked the competition
• Further tours to US
• Studied Ford's book (Today & Tomorrow) - Ford's Moving Assembly Line.
• Pull System - 
• In any well-run supermarket, individual items are replenished as each item begins to run low on the shelf. Material replenishment is initiated by consumption. 
• Implemented Kanban to signal to the prev step when its parts needed to be replenished (with the help of visual cards). Thus the concept of JIT was evolved. 
• Implemented Jidoka
• Implemented Kaizen (based on Deming's PDCA cycle)
• 
  

Toyota Production System (TPS)

Toyota

- Faster designs

- More reliable

- Competitive cost

The secret of Toyota's success is Operational Excellence...

TPS is set of lean tools and techniques and the Toyota Way provides governing principles for TPS. 

The TPS House

Taiichi Ohno is the creator of TPS. 

Developed by Fujio Cho, president of Toyota Motor Corp. 

> Structural system

> Is strong when the pillars and roof are strong

• JIT - Pull parts through production based on customer demand instead of pushing parts through production based on projected demand. Relies on many lean tools, such as Continuous Flow, Heijunka, Kanban, Standardized Work and Takt Time.
• Kaizen (Continuous Improvement) - A strategy where employees work together proactively to achieve regular, incremental improvements in the manufacturing process.
• Muda (Waste) Reduction - Muda is anything in the manufacturing process that does not add value from the customer’s perspective.
• Jidoka - Design equipment to partially automate the manufacturing process (partial automation is typically much less expensive than full automation) and to automatically stop when defects are detected.
• Heijunka - A form of production scheduling that purposely manufactures in much smaller batches by sequencing (mixing) product variants within the same process.
• Poka Yoke - Error proofing. Design error detection and prevention into production processes with the goal of achieving zero defects. An example is different types of nozzles (that don't fit into the non-compatible vehicle) for diesel and petrol at gas stations. 
• Visual management - Visual indicators, displays and controls used throughout manufacturing plants to improve communication of information.

Lean Startup

What is Lean Startup?

• A method to systematically address uncertainty through rapid iteration and market learning.
• If we can reduce the time between pivotsWe can increase our odds of successBefore we run out of moneyAll

Build-Measure-Learn Loop

• This is a strategic framework for executing the lean startup approach. 

1. Identify your assumptions
2. Prioritize assumptions
3. Focus on assumption with biggest risk
4. Figure out how to test assumption quickly
5. Figure out your hypothesis about that test
6. Run experiment
7. Review results
8. Iterate

Lean Pioneers

Key contributors to Lean methodology

The money from patent rights provided research fund for entry into the automotive industry now known as Toyota

JIDOKA = Automation with a human touch...

Lean Masterclass (Udemy, AIGPE)

Lean production is the production system of the 21st century like mass production was the production system of the 20th century.

Lean thinking example of empty soap boxes

"A Japanese soap factory used to produce soap boxes with too many instances of boxes delivered without the soap inside. The production chain consisted of preparing the soap in a nice shape on the one hand, building the box matching with the soap shape on the other hand, and finally putting the soap in the box. That sounds simple, yet many boxes ended up delivered to the customers without a soap inside!

After receiving several customers complaints, the factory manager could not afford to let so many defects out of his factory anymore… but, as everyone, he had tough budget constraints: no question to hire someone to check every single box had a soap inside before being delivered (considering the volumes of soaps being produced, it would have required dozens of people anyway); no question to invest in an expensive machine to X-ray, or even weight each box (beyond the machine investment, that would have also required more people to maintain the machine, and deal with the defects spotted by the machine anyway).

So, the soap manager brainstormed with his team, with the objective to find a simple and cheap solution to prevent the defects (empty boxes) from being delivered to the customers… and the solution came! A  fan ! Put a fan above the last element of the production chain: empty boxes will fly away! It took very little time and money to put the fan in place, and now the soap factory has regained the confidence of its customers."

What is Lean?

Lean is the systematic identification and elimination of waste.

Benefits of Lean

• Lower production costs
• Fewer personnel
• Quicker product development
• Higher quality
• Higher profitability
• Greater system flexibility

5 Areas that drive a Lean Producer

1. Cost
2. Quality
3. Delivery
4. Safety
5. Morale

Are Lean techniques applicable to the service industry?