Article Link

Yesterday an article titled “Learning from Toyota – Again” by John Teresko was published on IndustryWeek.com. The focus of Teresko’s article is centered around 2 key questions:

How does Toyota keep getting better?

What keeps competitors from emulating their performance?

To answer these questions, Teresko draws on the experience of Jeffery Liker and the 14 Management Principles of TPS outlined in “The Toyota Way”. The article also includes comments from Michael Paris of Illinois based Paris Consulting. In general this is a good article that deals with the important issue of treating Lean as a holistic, long term approach rather than as disjointed systems and tools haphazardly applied. Nothing new for all the true lean thinkers out there.

What really got my attention were some of the quotes in the article from Stanford professor Jim Matheson. He states that Toyota is, “driven by the need to continuously deliver more value to the customer. In contrast many of the new users of TPS tools tend to ignore that issue. The short-sighted tendency is to focus on little more than a cost-based strategy.” Matheson adds, “by itself, cost reduction is not a strategy unless you want to commoditize or go out of business.”

About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology, focused on improving quality and patient safety, improving access, reducing costs, and fully engaging healthcare professionals. He is also the Chief Improvement Officer for KaiNexus.