As part of the public flogging of Toyota for its massive quality problems and recalls, some are calling lean and the Toyota Production System into question. A recent WSJ article, How Lean Manufacturing Can Backfire, describes how Toyota’s use of common parts wreaks havoc during a recall. Part simplification is considered a lean practice. Many companies, especially GM, did not strive for part commonality and ended up with part proliferation, which is a costly and inefficient. GM didn’t have an integrated product team to design a vehicle, but a different design group for each system in the vehicle. GM has paid for this inefficiency or rather the U.S. taxpayers are paying for it. Why design a different braking system for every model? A common platform makes more sense. However, when it comes to an auto recall, part proliferation means that fewer vehicles will contain the exact same part. That doesn’t mean that part proliferation is safer for the consumer, even if it is far more costly and inefficient. To say that lean has backfired because of this one practice is to throw out the lean baby with the media bathwater. Ford, by the way, has adopted a common platform and common parts strategy for the Focus. Should Ford go back to the old platform proliferation approach? Probably not.
Toyota’s reputation for quality is now badly tarnished. And how they will get out of this mess is still not clear. But is this an indictment of lean? One of Toyota’s problems may be cultural. They kept known issues secret for far too long, possibly to save face, but in the long run making the situation more devastating. In lean, people are supposed to be rewarded, not punished, for uncovering problems as part of continuous improvement. I think that lean at Toyota has in fact been lean manufacturing, confined to the manufacturing floor, and not lean enterprise, which encompasses all employees, including senior management and indirect employees. Many companies think lean is just for the blue collar folks, not for management. It seems to have been counter-culture for Toyota to expose problems outside the factory walls.
I also wonder whether Toyota rested on its lean laurels and did not continue to evolve and improve its own system. In an AME discussion group, it was noted (and I have observed this myself) that Toyota employees are rarely seen at the many lean workshops and conferences that AME runs. If they do show up, it is only to present and then leave.
What I find typical in this situation is the lean bashing that ensues. Remember when this happened to the MBNQA (Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award)? As soon as an award winner runs into trouble, as happened to the Wallace Company, critics pile it on and pronounce the whole system a failure. Wallace Company was a family-owned pipe and valve distributor received the Baldrige Award in 1990 and then filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January of 1992. According to one observer, a consultant brought in to turn the company around said, “Instead of shoring up, officials spent time leading tours through the firm and on the lecture circuit.”
It seems that Toyota was better at listening to its internal customers than its external customers. It is better at fixing problems that associates find on the factory floor than the ones brought to its attention by its customers who drive the vehicles. The Toyota quality disaster will continue to be examined and written about for some time to come. And perhaps the causes of the problems will become clearer. But I believe that it wasn’t a failure of lean, but a failure of Toyota to follow the very system that made it successful in the first place. Toyota has the tools and the know-how to improve its quality and avoid quality and supplier glitches and potentially dangerous product failures. As I said when I wrote about its Tundra recall in November, Toyota had better reaffirm its commitment to quality and strengthen its resolve to fix underlying problems or suffer a decline like a couple of its American automaker brethren.
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