184 THETOYOTAWAYFIELDBOOK
Case Example: Making Line Stopping a Reward
for Lean Maturity
General Motors has perhaps had the greatest opportunity outside of
the Toyota group to learn the Toyota Production System (TPS). They
co-own NUMMI, a joint venture and Toyota’s first application of TPS to
an assembly plant outside of Japan. General Motors has had free
access to NUMMI, including sending many employees to work there
for one year or more. When they first started learning about TPS, they
merely copied what they saw at NUMMI. They quickly discovered that
it did not work. The andon system, for instance, did not work like it
did at Toyota. General Motors had invested in some of the most sophis-
ticated technology of fixed position, line-stopping systems to no avail.
Workers did not use it to stop the line and surface and solve problems.
In the Hamtramack, Michigan, plant that built Cadillacs, GM got smart.
They had an andon system set up with a fixed position stop system. But
they did not turn on that automatic line-stopping capability. Instead
they worked on stability of the process and on teaching the various
lean methods in the plant, like standardized work and disciplined use of
the kanban system. They set up work teams. Then they used an assess-
ment process to assess each individual team in the plant. It was a broad
assessment of the team’s discipline in using kanban, standard work, and
responding to problems on the line. Only when the team achieved a
strong score on the assessment could they have the automatic line-
stopping turned on. This was made very visible and was celebrated by
each team that achieved this milestone. Teams worked hard to achieve
this honor. And the line-stopping process began to work as intended.Build Quality Inspections into Every Job
This is an interesting paradox. Inspection is not a value-adding activity, but
Toyota stresses the inclusion of self-inspection in all standardized work. On the
surface this seems contradictory. A deeper look will reveal that this is somewhat
of a trade-off. Inspection does not add value, but it prevents greater waste from
occurring. It is important to realize that Toyota does not take the addition of any
waste lightly. There is always an effort to minimize the wasteful activity. There
are several methods of incorporating inspection into the work in such a way as
to minimize the waste and maximize the value.
Every operator has three responsibilities regarding quality:
- Check the incoming work to ensure that it is free of defects.
- Ve rify that his or her work is free of defects.
- Never knowingly pass defective product to the following operation.