The Standard

"What have you done to my machine!?"

The production manager was furious about the breakage of a degas rotor.  It is a piece of ceramic rudder that rotates in molten metal to purge impurities before the metal is used for casting.  My team member was called to the machine to troubleshoot why the degas rotor was not turning when auto cycle started.  What he found was there was a parameter that was different than the Standard posted.  After changing the parameter back to Standard, he wanted to test the rotor in manual outside of the molten metal.  He did not want to test it inside the molten metal because 1) he could not see it in operation, 2) if something happened, the splashing of the molten metal would dangerous.

When he started the rotor in manual, the rotor began rotating immediately at a very high speed, and within several seconds, the rotor shaft vibrated violently, and snapped.

The production manager, without fully knowing the reasoning behind this, immediately told my team member, "you should have tested the rotor INSIDE the molten metal, so that the metal will prevent the rotor from spinning too fast and breaking!"

After talking to my team member to find out about the background information, I went to talk to the production manager.  I told him, the key is this: regardless of whether he should have tested it inside or outside of the molten metal, the fact is, there is NO STANDARD to do the test.  Without such a Standard, it is unfair to the team member doing the troubleshooting to be blamed for breaking the rotor. It is management's problem to not provide the Standard to allow the team member to perform their work in confidence -- a basic requirement for JKK.

This case study shows that a Standard is not only important in allowing the team member to perform consistent work, but also as a way to handle any conflict at work in the fairest, most objective way.

It has been awhile since my last post.

Since then, there has been many changes to Toyota, my work capacity and of course, my TPS journey.

For Toyota, it has gone through the recall, the earthquake, and the Tsunami.

For me, I have been promoted from a Specialist (Engineer) to a Senior Specialist, and then to a Supervisor in Maintenance.  Because of this, I've been able to learn more about TPS from a more systems level.  The experiences have been both eye-opening, and frustrating.

I'm eager to share all these experience one by one.

When theory meets reality

I am an Industrial Engineer who is lucky enough to work for one of the world's most prestigious manufacturing companies -- Toyota Motor Corporation. As everyone in any manufacturing industries knows, Toyota is best known for the Toyota Way -- the Toyota Production System (or TPS).

I have always been very interested in learning more about the essence of TPS. In the beginning, I have no trouble finding materials on the topic, for example, from the Internet, various popular blogs, training courses from work, books etc.

However, as I learned more about it, and began to put the knowledge in practice, I started to getting a lot of unexpected results. Sometimes, it seems that it is impossible to achieve the desired results even though I believe I've fully followed the philosophy. Other times, I feel that people around me are preaching the concepts, but are acting very differently in reality.

I began searching for outlets where instead of discussing only the principles of TPS, the actual implementation of TPS is being documented for people like me to review and learn from such experience. The search, so far, has been fruitless.

So, here is my way of contributing to the understanding of TPS: This blog will document my own experiences with TPS.

It is not my intention to say I have all the answers to all the problems I will be discussing. In fact, this blog will serve as a collection of real life experiences of TPS implementation for discussion and learning. This is very similar to learning via the CASE STUDY method that is popular in many MBA curriculums. By identifying the problems between the theory and practice of TPS (i.e. what we call "identifying the gap" in TBP language), I hope that you and I will gain valuable insights in TPS.

Looking forward to sharing my experiences with you.