Last week I started a 7-part video series with Brandon Brown a Toyota Kata Coach and Lean Instructor/Facilitator as an Associate for the W3 Group. The first part of the videos series started with What is Toyota Kata?. After the podcast, Brandon told me what he was told when he mentioned Toyota Kata at the Toyota Texas Manufacture Plant in San Antonio.
Brandon said,
Someone told me in a Toyota Texas Manufacture Plant in San Antonio, where they make the Tacoma and the Tundra both, we asked them about Toyota Kata and they said, “Well we’ve read the book, we understand what the thinking behind that is but this is just the air we breathe, It’s just our culture…” They don’t call it Kata; they have a daily routine of focusing on continuous improvement and striving toward a target condition. An interesting fact is Kanban, Jidoka, Poka Yoke, all of those tools were solutions Toyota came up with to solve a specific problem they were facing, and they sometimes question us as to why would you take a tool that address our problem and try to blindly apply it toward your problem? You need to come up with a solution that addresses your problem, and Kata does that. Kata gives us the method for being able to think scientifically and come up without one tool. If we need to bring in a Lean tool, we bring it in. We bring it in out of the toolbox. But we focus on being able to think scientifically and PDCA towards a solution and come up with new and innovative solutions.
I think that is an interesting reply. I have always thought that Lean or Kata was not a magic potion or a prescription. Lean sets the ideal, however, you must understand your organization, the culture that exists and the culture that your customers expect and are willing to derive value from. You have to make the process your own. You have to rid yourself of Lean or other business processes. Successful companies that start down a Lean path are not Lean anymore, only the unsuccessful ones are. If you are successful at implementing Lean, it is simply not Lean. It becomes yours.
What are your thoughts? Is Lean a model that you should follow? Or is it something that you should adapt?
Marketing with PDCA (More Info): Targeting what your Customer Values at each stage of the cycle will increase your ability to deliver quicker, more accurately and with better value than your competitor. It is a moving target and the principles of Lean and PDCA facilitates the journey to Customer Value.