Material Handling & Supply Chain Technology

Hello,

Every big step has its difficulties. A man try to make a huge step and his pant is cracked. A chemical industry work hard to grow bigger and bigger they leave "Love Canal" behind. When Wall Street pushes Banks to grow we get economic downturn. When we create something new we cannot see the end. It can be low or very high. Everyone is working hard to get somewhere higher or richer but the limit is not yet or never established. Every organization goes and arrive to a non-predictable somewhere. Toyota is the same. They started and established the production standards and at a certain limit they are limited. They will pass through and stay at the leading position for longtime, Gil.

Short answer: feed back loops ; http://www.schuelers.com/ChaosPsyche/part_1_10.htm Longer answer: diversion of resources to immediate need/crisis nucleates weakness in other areas by creating latent organizational vulnerabilities. These surface later, especially as organization over fixates resources and attention on last problem encountered instead of continuous improvement globally with all processes. Compounding this is "satisficing" as management gives up fighting for optimum and maximization in order to eke out any profit possiblein light of competition and environmental (market not necessarily GAIA) factors. My 2 cents. 2 sense? milo

Hi Milo,

what's that say in english??

"nucleates weakness" I dunno what that means?

"over fixates resources" ??

satisficing? interesting.

I know you are a super advanced being.. please have pity on me.. I'm almost getting it, but not quite...

Chris

Nucleates weakness= Seeds weakness, creates weakness,point of flaw in organization like a hernia. Latent means not yet developed, but present none the less. over fixates resources. From now on, toyota is going to devote ten times more engineering resources and testing on accelerator systems than necessary. Forever and ever amen. I've seen it happen in automotive. One 'imperfection' gets through and they build in over inspection forever and ever and ever despite the imposition of permanent root cause corrective actions. Satisficing= hybrid of satisfy and sacrifice. Basically means compromise; partially satisfy demand for profits in one goal area by sacrificing demand for perfection in another goal area. Think girl friend vs wife vs career and you begin to get a picture...<grins> A call center may want a 4 minute max phone call, but they also want 100 % satisfied callers. Some complaints take more than 4 minutes to resolve satisficing is where management tolerates 5 minute average call time to get 95% satisfaction score, vs 4 minute average call time and 65 % satisfaction score. Hope that helps. milo I've read your responses Chrisg288, you're no dummy

excellent response, thank you !!

cheers,

Chris

Hi Chris,

You are absolutely right. What kind of language is used by these managers who talk like all politicians do. I am sure, they talk and realize nothing or very little. They have no knowledge or idea about organization of work, processes and operations. They don't know where to start and what to do after. I was in those meetings with excellent talkers but without consistance and value. Today, the company still never made a cent of profit, the production is archaic and disorganized, was sold out by one of the world biggest group to another big boy who wants to sell it again.

Chris, what does mean "super advanced"? I cannot catch it. They are super talkers and companies want to obtain from these guys some results. Amazing, isn't it? When you put down some elementary actions, feasible and giving results, no one responds. Have a nice day, Gil.

Hi Gil,

First off, I knew that Milo was one of our most respected members on CR4, so I was trying to be friendly with him. He certainly doesn't fall under any umbrella of typical. Around here, he is generally talked about in hushed tones... He was the first on CR4 to reach 100 GA, for what it is worth. (controversial subject, but stellar performance) If you read a few of his other posts, you will see brilliance. He is the real deal. your paint brush might be too wide..

That being said, I tend to agree with you about 'other' managers... (although the worst ones I met had the ability to keep their mouth shut at meetings, and do their dirty work behind closed doors.) There are many with little insight into improvement, and sometimes even less caring. That coupled with higher than normal political instincts makes them less than fun to work with. (I guess I have developed trust issues where none existed before)

Super advanced was a tongue-in-cheek reference to a supreme intelligence, like an alien race, coming down to earth, and bestowing knowledge... but simple tribesman doesn't understand.. (and builds straw airplanes after he leaves, to represent his craft)

Cheers,

Chris

Hi Milo,

so... feedback loops. Are you talking about Customer Feedback or something internal that minimizes the long cycle rise and fall (of empires and quality cultures in large corporations)?

Cheers,

Chris

Hi Chrisg288,

The feedback loop works like this.

The organization has an orthodoxy. It achieves an equilibrium with that orthodoxy.

A significant emotional event arises that challenges that orthodoxy.

The entire organization refocuses on the new threat, and applies those lessons learned as the new orthodoxy, to the exclusion of other relevant ideas/ practices etc.

(I learned early in my career that once a customer learns a root cause in one situation, he thinks that happens each and every time a New problem ocurrs. "The last parts had seams, do you think that these are seams too?" even though the issue is in fact a shrinkage cavity in the ID, and seams are on the OD...

So we become locked in to our new painful lesson at the expense of other possible learnings. New pseudo equilibrium... until the next major faux pas.

The military folks are always training and equipped to fight the last war...

Treacy and Wiersema talk about an organization's unique value discipline: Operational Excellence, Product Leadership, and Customer Intimacy. There are only three, and Their point is that companies truly only master one of these. So they 'satisfice' on the others but rule with their best value discipline.

When a company changes its game from, say "Operational Excellence" into "Product Leadership," as Toyota did, they find that the systems that worked so well for the one are insufficient for the second.

Clearly Toyota 'owned' Operational excellence. But as they became the new "Product Leaders," they lacked the cultural and systemic tools to adapt to the new challenges that come with the territory of "Product Leadership". So the pendulum will swing to over compensate for this failure-and their new initiatives will all center on the last failure, and set them down yet another path for another fall. That is the loop until the next significant emotional event.

Its funny because every assy line employee at Toyota is authorised to pull the Andon cord (to stop the line) but culturally, noone in the organization had the authority to tell the chairman that there were problems down below.To pull the Andon cord for the entire company. Their cultural penchant for consensus and deference to authority was the perfect latent defect in their enterprise. In many ways they failed because of their "Japanese culture. " The same Japanese culture that enabled them to build consensus and standardize work and eliminate waste as a team of operational excellents, became the fatal flaw in their execution of product leadership.

They weren't even on the scale for customer intimacy... denial and blame are never part of a customer intimate organizations behaviors.

milo

Well said Milo; a twelve page Harvard Business Review treatise in a few succinct, and very well-written paragraphs. Having once toiled in aerospace and mil-spec environments, I judge your assessment to be 'dead-on-balls' accurate (to quote Marisa Tomei).

'Failing to pull the Andon cord for the whole company' is endemic to all large, hierarchal organizations within which one's own place and progress is usually the outcome of a delicate, and oftentimes politically flavored ballet. Few employees possess the temerity to 'pull that cord' which is why God made retired consultants; to tell executives what no one else will because they can afford to not give a damn.

Again, nice job.

Thank you, Doobster, and a tip of the hat to Ms Tomei. :-) Your retired consultant insight is worth repeating. milo

Hi M,

Thanks for your words! Finally we have something we can digest and understand easily after a few complicated.

Yes, I believe that in the new era of growth, Toyota don't have the right people at every needed location. A smaller organization maintain model numbers and options at minimum, and everything is easy or easier to make without error and without control. When design is good, execution of parts are good, and the assamly has experience what and how to do, everything is falling in place, and the results are good. Over-diversification is the first step to confusion and error. They will adjust and go well in the near future.

In the coating industry, I fought to modify the production of paint but no one listen or make some changes. Thanks for your invigorating comment, Gil.

Profit is was keep our job , but with good quality.

There are still companies, that believes that quality is the most valuable characteristic of a corporation .Several times, searching for improving quality, we decided to switch to higher costs suppliers , also knowing that will reduced our profit, in benefit of our automotive customers.

Meaning we should not loose hope in Quality despite of what happens .

Well Doobster6,

You have not earned your name today, because that is one of the most eloquent bits of writing I've ever read. It should be friggin framed.

GA.

Chris

I like the story of 'Bill' but don't these people ever consider the alternative of actually asking the customer? He could have found out if the discepancy was critical, or if the deliver could wait.
My old boss would rather send it out wrong today than right tomorrow.
I've occaisionally got into trouble from the boss for telling the customer the truth...I've never got in trouble for it from the customer though, and it has helped re-build our customer base.
Del

Or the faults may have been borne of simple engineering errors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi Daniel,

Absolutely not! Engineers are good or bad, we get the same % error or fault. No one is perfect in this WORLD! Perfection is a word used by bosses and CEOs to separate themselves from ordinary people like we are.

The American car industry is at the end. We, the rest of the world, wait for other big products created by them. Just to mention; Telephone, Portland cement, fast-food, TV, Nylon, and I forget thousand at least. Let them do the next, we will buy many of it, Gil.

It is called "punctated evolution". see toyota discussion here.

Chris

Hi Chris,

Very interesting and thanks for it!

The Toyota problem is not a Toyota car problem. It's the American car industry's problem. They are losing the leadership, and will lose the car business completely like they lost the TV and other products production. They did not listen to their genious people like Deming, Crosby, and others. They went to teach what and how to do to others, to the listeners. This is the consequence of the refusal of doing things the way must be done. Today, the "big three" realised, but mainly GM that this is the end and again they refuse to accept facts. It costs the Americans and us billions but people's money cannot help. They will die in rapidly or little bit later but the time is here!

Everything is written about quality, what to do, how to do but most CEOs don't want to listen, mostly they want to tell everyone their desires to realization.

It's the same as the Vietnam war. The French tasted what's ideology versus guns. The Americans said that the French soldiers are dolls with a revolver in the pocket. We know the final results.

Imagine, we have two (2) cars with accident (I have questions!) on a few hunred-thousands the same model. Let cry the woman in front of the senate and TVs. Was a show!!! How many hamburger is thrown in the garbage because of defect, in a day? Please, let me laugh, Gil.

I was wondering if these problems with Toyota cars already existed in all previous cars designs, and someone find or complained for the first time and suddenly everybody look deeply on it ?

Related Problems accepted by Toyota

floor mat entrapment of accelerator pedal / weak pedal (need reinforcement )