By Kevin Meyer
Interesting article by John Shook in the latest MIT Sloan Review on the culture at NUMMI. The GM-Toyota joint venture let Toyota experiment with applying TPS in the U.S. while GM could learn about TPS. Toyota learned, GM ignored, and the rest is pretty much history.
Two sections of the article are particularly interesting and contrast Japanese (or at least Toyota) culture with that of the U.S. and GM. First, the concept of andon.
The best example of how the culture was changed at NUMMI is the famous stop-the-line — or andonandon— system on the assembly line. All of the GM and NUMMI people who underwent training in Japan experienced learning and working with the stop-the-line system (or some variation of it). One of the decisions to be made in establishing production at the joint venture was whether to install the stop-the-line system. For Toyota, of course, that was no decision at all — it was a given. The system epitomizes Toyota’s belief in, and commitment to, developing the means to enable employees to work in a way that “builds in” quality.
A key Toyota tenet is “Respect for People,” the conviction that all employees have the right to be successful every time they do their job. Part of doing their job is finding problems and making improvements. If we as management want people to be successful, to find problems and to make improvements, we have the obligation to provide the means to do so.
Of course that level of employee power scared the crap out of GM.
When NUMMI was being formed, though, some of our GM colleagues questioned the wisdom of trying to install andonthere. “You intend to give these workers the right to stop the line?” they asked. Toyota’s answer: “No, we intend to give them the obligation to stop it — whenever they find a problem.”
A perfect demonstration of how Toyota respects people.
In Toyota’s system, each worker on the assembly line knows precisely what his job is. He is given the knowledge and skills to know when he has encountered a problem (an abnormality that prevents him from successfully completing his task), what to do when he’s found such a problem, and exactly what will happen when he notifies his leader about the problem. His team leader will come to provide assistance within his job cycle, or the time available to complete his assigned responsibilities. (Note: The line doesn’t actually stop right away. It halts only after it reaches a certain point — called a “fixed position” — and only after the team leader has made the decision to let it stop.)
That translates into a promise from management to the work force: “Whenever you have a problem completing your standardized work, your team leader will come to your aid within your job cycle.” That’s quite a promise to a work force of a couple thousand whose job cycle is in the neighborhood of one minute. But Toyota learned that that is what it takes to enable workers to build in quality and to be engaged in problem solving and making improvements.
This of course leads to how the different companies, and cultures, approach problems. First, learn the value of problems themselves.
Every person in a supervisory capacity, including hourly team leaders, visited Toyota City for two or more weeks of training at the Takaoka plant. The training included long hours of lectures but, most importantly, practical on-the-job training in which they worked alongside their counterparts to learn what was to be their job back in California. At the end of each training tour, we asked the trainees what they would most want to take back with them to Fremont of all they had seen at Toyota. Their answer was invariably the same: “The ability to focus on solving problems without pointing fingers and looking to place the blame on someone. Here it’s ‘five whys’ [which means simply asking “why?” until reaching the root cause of any problem]. Back home, we’re used to the ‘five whos.’” Call attention to the problem to solve it, or to the behavior to change it, but not to the individual for being “wrong.”
Then deal with the problem.
“Problems” were indeed viewed completely differently. Americans like to respond “no problem” when asked how things are going. One phrase known and used with gusto by every early member of NUMMI was the Japanese word for “no problem,” which, when spoken with a typical American accent, sounded pretty much like “Monday night.” So when Japanese trainers tried to ask how certain problems were being handled, American NUMMI employees could be heard all over the plant cheerily shouting, “Monday night!” The response to this by the Japanese was, “No problem is problem.” There are always problems, or issues that require some kind of “countermeasure” or better way to accomplish a given task. And seeing those problems is the crux of the job of the manager.
No problem is a problem. Problems are good. Thanking employees for finding problems, even if they are their own. What a concept. What respect for people.
Of course the interesting epilogue is that Toyota executives have forgotten their own shop floor lesson.