Toyota wants its partners to be independent because if they’re dependent
and looking to Toyota for constant guidance, they will never have the strength
to improve themselves. Toyota cannot drive improvement to the level they want
from outside, so they say that it’s fine if their suppliers have their own way, not
the Toyota Way. In fact, it’s encouraged... as long as it works. When there is a
serious quality problem or a launch problem or a problem that might shut down
Toyota, then the Toyota crew jumps into action and begins to teach the supplier
the Toyota Way. They may not call it that, but they’re teaching all the principles
described in this book. In our experience, the Toyota suppliers are anxious to
learn, because they know it is a better way.
So there are some strong prerequisites for changing your partners along
with your internal operations to create a mutually compatible culture:
- You must be seriously doing it yourself internally.
- You must develop true leaders whom the suppliers want to follow and
learn from. - You must have patience in teaching the suppliers.
- Suppliers must want to be taught by you.
- Suppliers must see value added to themselves by learning.
- Suppliers’ independence must grow over time; they must develop their
own lean culture.
460 THETOYOTAWAYFIELDBOOK
TRAP
Jumping the Gun on Teaching Lean to Suppliers
We cannot emphasize enough how important it is to be seriously
doing lean yourself before trying to spread it to suppliers. We have
seen truly ridiculous situations where larger companies brim-
ming with machismo decide to bring lean to the little people—
their small and inferior suppliers. The problem: The big, pow-
erful customer has done nothing more than a lot of talking, a lot
of PowerPoint presentations, and a few limited models. The sup-
pliers, in contrast, worked hard at lean and were far ahead of
their customers. Having these customers come to teach lean and
then ask for price reductions was akin to hunting and gathering.Again, Toyota wants suppliers to have their own cultures. But they want
those cultures to be compatible with that of Toyota’s, so the basic principles of
the Toyota Way must be realized in the suppliers. For example, if the suppliers
were to have a traditional large batch, top-down culture, their costs would prob-
ably be too high, and they’d risk shutting down Toyota, and Toyota would not