Toyota is widely recognized for developing one of the most efficient and influential production systems in modern business history. In fact, TPS, or the Toyota Production System, and its methods have been studied, copied, and adapted by organizations across virtually every industry.
But despite decades of companies implementing Toyota-inspired tools, very few have been able to replicate the success of the original TPS framework.
Why? Because the emphasis has been on copying what Toyota does rather than how the organization thinks and behaves. The former approach is considerably easier than the latter, but doesn’t yield the same results.
In a recent episode of the Lean 911 podcast, founder of Lean Horizons Consulting and Lean expert of 40+ years, Mark DeLuzio, explored this gap in understanding and execution.
Nearly seven decades after the methodology was developed, its central ideas remain relevant, though the key misconception many organizations are struggling with is mistaking the visible tools of Lean for the underlying principles that make it work.
In This Article
- The Difference Between TPS Tools and TPS Thinking
- The Four Rules Behind the Toyota Production System
- Building an Organization of Problem-Solvers
- Start Measuring What Matters
The Difference Between TPS Tools and TPS Thinking
In our increasingly fast-paced, action-oriented world, it’s easy to see how many organizations have gotten their wires crossed when it comes to implementing TPS tools.
The general belief is this: If we act like TPS, we will be like TPS.
But the distinction between Toyota’s tools and its underlying way of thinking, or being, is critical for understanding why so many Lean transformations flatline.
Organizations can, have, and will continue to install Kanban systems, create production cells, and add visual controls. Yet even after adopting these practices, they’ll likely continue to contend with results that fall short of Toyota’s.
Take this real-world experience from Mark’s 40+ years in the field for example:
He walked into a factory that had Andon lights installed — so many, in fact, he remembers feeling like he was in Las Vegas.
“The whole factory looked like a casino with all these lights blinking and going off.” — Mark DeLuzio
The flashing lights were unceasing and as a result, they meant virtually nothing to the workers on the shop floor. When another light went on, potentially signaling a machine failure or a breakdown in the production process, employees largely ignored it.
Now, many may point a blaming finger at the operators and employees on the floor for ignoring a warning light. But the real issue lies in the cultural environment in which the Andon system was placed.
The company had installed the equipment without establishing the standard work, responsibilities, and sense of urgency needed to make it useful.
Employees had no clear expectation of what should happen when a light came on, and as a result, the organization wound up in a position where this misuse of a TPS tool was hindering more than helping.
Sidenote: So What Should an Andon System Really Do?
An Andon system should help employees surface problems and trigger a response.
Over time, the goal is to eliminate the underlying causes that require the signal in the first place. Simply responding to a breakdown without addressing why it happened means the problem stays in the background, waiting to return.
This example reflects a larger point in the article Mark DeLuzio revisited in the Lean 911 podcast episode — Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System by Steven Spear and H. Kent Bowen.
A landmark article from the Harvard Business Review, its core arguments still hold true 30 years later: Toyota operates as an organization of problem-solvers.
People throughout the company are trained, encouraged, and expected to be able to recognize when actual conditions differ from what should be happening. Not only that, but each employee also moves through the process of investigating the issue, developing a hypothesis or potential solution, and testing a countermeasure. Their company culture treats problem-solving as a process of experimentation, and that way of thinking is what competitors can’t see on a tour.
The Four Rules Behind the Toyota Production System
First, what can visitors see on a tour of the Toyota factory?
They can observe the equipment, the tools, the tangibles. But it’s the thinking, culture, and behavior behind those material items that takes a different kind of effort to develop.
In the aforementioned article, Spear and Bowen identified four rules that help explain how Toyota puts this thinking into practice.
Because, if Toyota’s advantage comes from how people approach problems and processes, the natural next question is how an organization can create the conditions necessary for that kind of integrated problem-solving.
1. Specify the work.
Every activity should be clearly defined in terms of its content, sequence, timing, and expected outcome. This applies to manufacturing processes, services, documents, orders, and other work.
Without a defined standard, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to recognize when something has gone wrong.
For example, Mark recently gave a presentation in which a CEO asked how he could prevent employees from making a particular mistake involving the storage of two chemicals.
When Mark asked whether or not the company had a clearly defined standard specifying that the chemicals could not be stored together, the CEO replied, “Well everyone knows that.”
Yet only three people in the room actually did know that.
A standard establishes the one best way to execute a process, and when performance differs from that standard, then and only then does the gap become visible. So, without a standard, the company could not reasonably identify any sort of deviation or say that an error had occurred — even if the CEO believed his advanced knowledge of chemical storage to be common sense.
2. Specify every connection.
Every relationship and connection point within an organization should be made explicit and specific. Requests, products, information, and responses need an unambiguous path between the people involved.
Everyone should understand who is supplying what, to whom, and how the connection works.
3. Specify every pathway.
Products, services, and information should move through clearly defined pathways.
Unnecessary detours and unclear handoffs make it harder to identify where problems occur. A direct path makes the work easier to follow and deviations easier to recognize.
4. Improve through experimentation under the guidance of a teacher.
In an organization that truly embodies TPS principles, improvements should follow a scientific approach.
Employees should be equipped with the support necessary to identify a gap, develop an explanation for what’s causing it, develop a solution, and test that solution. And, critically, a teacher or sensei should help guide the process so employees can develop their problem-solving skills as they improve the work.
Together, these rules create an environment where problems are easier to see and investigate.
Standards establish expectations, clear connections and pathways make the flow of work visible, and experimentation provides a disciplined way to improve.
But having these rules written down is only a starting point. Their value depends on whether people throughout the organization understand how to apply them. Which brings the focus back to leadership and employee development.
Building an Organization of Problem-Solvers
Most Lean-oriented organizations understand that problem-solving is central to Lean company cultures, but they miss the holistic, or whole-picture, nature of this principle.
In Toyota’s approach, problem-solving isn’t reserved for engineers, managers, or Lean specialists; it happens throughout the whole organization. Employees of TPS receive the training, guidance, and resources needed to improve their own work, which in turn bolsters the sense of agency, responsibility, and competency each employee holds.
Mark saw this intangible, cultural practice play out in a visit to Hino Motors in Japan.
At the time, Mark was pretty proud of the employee suggestion system they instituted at Jake Brake, the birthplace of the Danaher Business System. Their suggestion system was generating about two suggestions per employee every month, which seemed great without a benchmark.
Then, during his visit to Hino, he learned that employees were actively implementing nine improvements per employee, per month.
The difference was how the culture of Hino supported this work. Every Friday, the afternoon was set aside for improvement activities, and that time was accounted for when calculating available production time.
They received training and guidance from a coach, as well as access to resources from other departments like engineering, IT, and maintenance.
While this is just one example, it’s a strong case study for exemplifying how a company can make the intangible tangible by creating the material conditions necessary for employees to identify problems and follow through with improvements.
That level of involvement requires time and support from leadership. Simply telling employees to solve problems at the lowest level, without giving them the skills or resources to do so, is unlikely to change how work gets done.
The Current Escalation Problem
In many organizations, problem-solving looks completely different.
An issue, once identified, typically moves from an operator to a supervisor, then a manager. Then the manager calls engineering, engineering calls quality, and eventually a meeting takes place between a group of people who are often several levels removed from the actual work.
Organizations that want to instill the mindset and behavior of TPS, not just the tools, should instead develop the capability to solve problems where they occur, with guidance from someone versed in the scientific method.
Without that conceptual underpinning, problem-solving becomes too focused on the individual issue rather than the conditions and processes that allowed the issue to emerge in the first place.
“So that problem’s gonna rear its ugly head again, maybe in a different form, on a different part, or in a different fashion. You play Whac-A-Mole.” — Mark DeLuzio
Warranty problems, for example, may be corrected at the assembly level without examining the process conditions that produced the defect, which means the same failures can then return in a different form.
This has implications for the role of a company’s Lean office, too. During his time at Danaher, Mark’s central goal was developing capabilities throughout the organization.
This is because a Lean office that overemphasizes running events, implementing tools, and reporting savings can quickly lose sight of the sense of responsibility the TPS originators took in their roles. Ultimately, the success of a Lean office should be judged by whether or not employees and leaders are becoming better problem-solvers.
That’s the critical difference that organizations should examine when evaluating a Lean transformation.
Start Measuring What Matters
The four rules of TPS, as identified by Spear and Bowen, and the tangible examples of employee development shared here both point toward a different way to evaluate Lean.
Rather than looking primarily at which TPS tools have been implemented, leaders should look at how problems are identified, investigated, and resolved throughout the organization. And if you’re unsure of what kind of leadership you’re exemplifying in your organization, there’s a straightforward question you can ask yourself for more information:
Who solves problems in your organization, and how do they solve them?
This simple question — and whether or not it can be answered in a direct, meaningful way — can often reveal more about your organization’s problem-solving capability than a checklist of tools or completed Kaizen events.
If the answer is unclear, that’s a sign that your organization may have focused too heavily on implementing Toyota’s tools and not enough on developing the people who use them.
Leaders should make that development a priority, teaching employees at every level how to recognize problems, investigate their causes, and test improvements in their own work. Because that’s how an organization begins to adopt the thinking behind Toyota’s system, rather than simply reproducing its tools.
Frequently Asked Questions
Toyota’s tools, such as 5S, Kanban, Andon, and standard work, support Lean processes. However, implementing these tools alone does not develop the problem-solving capabilities that make the Toyota Production System effective. Successful Lean implementation also requires employees at every level to recognize problems, investigate their causes, and test improvements.
The four rules, described by Steven Spear and H. Kent Bowen, are:
– Specify every activity in terms of content, sequence, timing, and outcome.
– Specify every connection between customers and suppliers.
– Specify all pathways for products and services.
– Improve through experimentation under the guidance of a teacher.
Toyota develops problem-solving skills by involving employees in continuous improvement and teaching them to use a scientific approach. Employees learn to identify gaps between expected and actual performance, investigate possible causes, test countermeasures, and evaluate the results. Leaders and experienced coaches provide guidance throughout the process.
Standard work defines the expected sequence, timing, and outcome of an activity. This gives employees a clear reference for identifying deviations and recognizing problems. Without an established standard, it becomes difficult to determine when a process has gone off track or whether an improvement has actually been made.
Problems should be addressed as close as possible to where the work takes place, with employees receiving appropriate training and guidance from supervisors, managers, and experienced coaches. This helps build problem-solving capability throughout the organization instead of relying on people several levels removed from the process to investigate every issue.
Leaders should look beyond the number of Lean tools implemented, Kaizen events completed, or employees certified. They should examine how problems are identified and resolved throughout the organization. A useful question is: Who solves problems in your organization, and how do they solve them? The answer can reveal whether employees have the skills, support, and authority to improve their own work.
