Toyota Way Fieldbook : A Practical Guide for Implementing Toyota's 4Ps

A good lean consultant can get this payback. They can reduce people, cut
inventory, and make the numbers add up. But what are they really doing? In
terms of the PDCA cycle, they’re going through rapid successions of Plan-Do,
Plan-Do. There’s barely time to catch one’s breath and check anything other
than the resulting cost savings.
We’ve discussed many lean improvement strategies at many levels. The
model in Figure 19-11 puts these into a framework based on two factors: Is the
improvement strategy focusing primarily at the value stream level or primarily
at the individual process level? Is the improvement strategy primarily aimed at
applying technical tools to get short-term results, or does the goal include longer-
term development of your people?
We’ve described the strengths and weaknesses of the process improvement
approach and described the value stream approach based on value stream map-
ping and a model line. Both approaches are often used by companies primarily
for short-term, bottom-line results. But doing this misses a much greater oppor-
tunity—to develop your people and organization so they’re capable of making
many of these improvements and thus multiplying the benefits. Many companies
with employee involvement programs focus solely on process improvements
and people development. People get team training and training in problem-
solving tools but don’t understand broader value stream improvement concepts.
As we’ve seen, Toyota works on improvement in all of these quadrants, but
more than most companies, they have worked to build a lean learning organi-
zation that combines value stream improvement with people development. Where
is your company?

Chapter 19. Lean Implementation Strategies and Tactics 419

Improvement Focus

Isolated

Processes

Value

Stream

Management Orientation

Technical Tools—

Short-term results

People

Development Focus

Employee

Involvement

Process

Improvement

Tools

Lean Learning

Organization

Value Stream

Mapping and

Implementation

TOYOTA

Figure 19-11. Management approaches to improvement: Where is your
company?