We then ask, “Are you interested in reducing your lead time? Do you have
non-value-added wastes that you can start to eliminate?” Obviously the answer
is yes, every process has waste, or mudain Japanese.
The foundation of the Toyota Way is based upon this simple yet elusive goal
of identifying and eliminating waste in all work activities. In fact, when you
look at a process as a time line of activities, material, and information flows, and
chart the process from start to end, you find a depressing amount of waste—
usually far more waste than value-added activity. But seeing the waste is not the
same as eliminating it. The challenge is to develop a systematic method for con-
tinuously identifying and eliminating waste. A sporadic removal will yield
pockets of improvement, but the system-wide benefits that Toyota enjoys are
achieved by following a cyclical method of continuous improvement.
The key to forcing waste from the organization lies in this paradox: In order
to improve, the condition must be made worse. There is no way to become truly
lean without a certain amount of discomfort. Unfortunately, there is no “magic
pill” or “silver bullet” that will produce the desired result without sacrifice. As
we will learn later, when we link operations together, as in creating a cell, when
one process shuts down, the next immediately shuts down. The pain in any part
of the process immediately causes pain for the rest of the process.
You might ask, “What could Ohno-san possibly have been thinking?” Some
level of improvement can surely be gained without discomfort. There is always
“big waste” that can be removed because there is no rational reason for its exis-
tence. As an example, we recently heard of a manufacturing company that
wanted to “get lean” because of the enormous amounts of inventory after every
step of their process. They hired a consultant who sold them scheduling soft-
ware that figured out how much inventory they needed to sustain flow in their
process at each step. They then made it a policy to limit inventory following the
computer model. Inventory went down, and the consultant was a hero. Nothing
else changed in the process, and there was no pain. Who can beat that?
Unfortunately, nothing else did improve. They got some savings based on the
inventory reduction, but nagging problems of equipment downtime, long change-
over times that limited flexibility, delays due to shortages of the parts the customer
needed, and tons of firefighting were still the order of the day. So waste was
reduced, but the root cause problems that accounted for the waste were not. And
by the way, over time, the inventory levels began to creep back up.
Real success comes from an improvement processfor identifying waste—
understanding the root cause and putting in place true countermeasures to this
cause. Unfortunately, this is much more difficult than installing a piece of soft-
ware. Complete success is dependent on three things:
- A focus on understanding the concepts that support the philosophies of
lean, strategies for implementation, and the effective use of lean method-