In a message dated 9/2/05 4:31:25 AM, mmpa...@boscop.de writes:
> This reminds me of the book of Nonaka/Takeuchi about the Knowledge > Producing Organization. > One "trick" to stir up the self-confident organizations management - > people already doing a good job - and force them to develop to higher > levels was the introduction of a deliberate irritation, painting a > dangerous picture of the companies future at the horizon. > > They propose - if I remember right - to accept the 1st aversive > reaction against the "wrong input" and develop the process, after > this intuitive reaction of the ingroup, by asking: "Apart of the > overall wrongness, isn't there something, WE could get out of this. A > weak point, a blind spot in our company,..." > Actually Bernd, Toyota practices what you said above, if I read it correctly. If there is a line job that takes five people to do, they will deliberately take one person off the line to see what problems arise, then solve those problems so that four people can now do the work. The person removed is NEVER laid off but gets to go work on Kaizen teams that are busy solving even bigger problems by deliberately stressing the system in other ways. Thus, they are continuously improving the whole system so it is more efficient, effective, and takes less cost to produce the same automobile. It is truly a learning organization. They do this with every system in the company---design, development, marketing, order-fulfillment, accounting, human resources, etc., etc. This attitude and action is the principle reason that Toyota is on track to become the largest producer of autos in the world, passing GM by 2010 at the latest, probably sooner. They are already the most profitable auto producer in the world, making more profit than what was the 'big three' combined (GM, Daimler-Chrysler, Ford). Near the end of his life, the principle creator of the Toyota Production System (called Lean Thinking in the West), Taiichi Ohno, was asked what he was still doing at Toyota. His reply was "reducing the time between getting the order and when we receive the money." Still focussed on that single goal which means taking the eight wastes out of the time stream that is represented by that statement---order to production to transport to customer to money received. It works!! Paul Everett * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
