Toyota is ground zero for modern Lean. It is where all of the historical advances in manufacturing technology and operational leadership and supply chain management came together in what is recognizable as the current version of Lean. Taiichi Ohno is widely credited with being the most instrumental person in creating Read more…
Sakichi Toyoda (February 14, 1867 – October 30, 1930) was the founder of Toyoda, though originally, it was not an automobile manufacturer. It was called the Toyoda Loom Works. In addition to being an entrepreneur, Toyoda was an inventor and created an automatic loom that stopped itself when a string Read more…
Kiichiro Toyoda (June 11, 1894 – March 27, 1952) was the son of Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyoda Loom Works. Kiichiro Toyoda was the man responsible for shifting the course of Toyoda from being a textile company to becoming an automobile manufacturer.
Eiji Toyoda (Sept 12, 1913 – September 17, 2013) was, at the time of his tenure, the longest serving president of Toyota. He was the nephew of Sakichi Toyoda, the man who founded Toyoda Loom Works, the predecessor of the automotive version of the company. Eiji Toyoda reportedly visited the Read more…
Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856 – March 21, 1915) is most well known for his work on time and motion studies and scientific management. While the facts and data aspect of his work is aligned with modern Lean, his theories of management diverged from Lean in one major way. Read more…
Tolerance stackup is the cumulative effect of the components of a product being skewed towards the same side of the specification limits. Tolerance is the range between the lower specification limit and the upper limit of a part. Imagine you have a product that lines three or four or more Read more…
Tribal knowledge is the unwritten collective wisdom of an organization. It refers to the tradition of tribes handing information down from generation to generation in the time before the written word was developed. In the same fashion, when information is not document properly, it must be passed from employee to Read more…
Training does not happen by accident. Building an effective team requires planning. This training plan should, at the minimum, consider the following: The overall needs of the organization An assessment of the current skills of the team Training capabilities Training goals This training plan does a few main things. It Read more…
Trust is an important part of continuous improvement. Team members have to believe their bosses. They have to be sure that making gains won’t cost them their jobs and that making mistakes on projects won’t get them in trouble. Lean requires a great deal of autonomy from frontline employees. Lean Read more…
Tooling is a generic term for any of the variety of equipment associated with production machines, especially ones that do fabrication. Cutting tools, dies, precision clamps, injection molds, jigs, and fixtures all fall into this category. Most companies with more than just a few production machines will have a tooling Read more…
In its purest form, the definition of a team is “a group of people associated with each other for some form of joint action or activity.” The word choice for this definition is very deliberate. Some definitions add in verbiage that implies effectiveness. Examples include “common goal”, “working together”, “organized”, Read more…