Here’s a nice story about the Toyota Supplier Support Center helping a charitable organization with their holiday operations: “Toyota applies production know-how to roll out holiday help for needy.”

It just goes to show how there are processes in just about any type of organization that can be improved with Lean/TPS principles and the involvement of the people who do the work.

Toyota experts helped St. Vincent de Paul improve their food basket assembly:

“From there, it was a matter of getting the SVDP volunteers to share their knowledge of the operation with us and together we created a smooth, efficient and steady flow of goods that would allow us to complete a basket every 15 seconds. That means baskets filled accurately with just the right amount of everything and fast enough to reduce wait time for the customers,” Thornberry said. Instead of putting together wheels, seats and an engine to assemble a car, the volunteers lined up canned goods, produce and frozen turkeys in just the right order and just the right amount to deliver a Thanksgiving food basket that will be enjoyed by a family in need.

It’s a nice articulation of working together – it wasn’t the TSSC people who “fixed” SVDP, it required the input of all parties, those who know the work and those with an outside perspective. This is the same approach that works in manufacturing, healthcare, and other settings.

Again, from the article:

Hideshi Yokoi, president of the Toyota Production System Support Center, pointed out that helping St. Vincent de Paul also helped the folks from Toyota. “It gives our team members experiences applying the Toyota Production System outside of the manufacturing environment and allows us to help improve our community,” he said. “Giving back in the community is also part of the Toyota Way.”

It’s nice of Toyota to share their expertise, but as you see it also benefits Toyota and their people.

I can think back, personally, to a time a volunteered with a group of friends at a food bank — the processes and operations were so poorly organized, it was a very frustrating experience. And, unfortunately, as a volunteer, I was in a position to just “do as I was told” and was only allowed to work the way we had been shown. That was the last time I volunteered there.

It’s not surprising that some community Lean clubs and groups volunteer their time to get involved with operations-intensive charities like food banks or Goodwill.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Update: Here’s a video that  Toyota posted on YouTube:

About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology. Mark is author of the Shingo Award-winning book Lean Hospitals and the upcoming book Healthcare Kaizen. He is also the Chief Improvement Officer for the technology startup KaiNexus.

Tagged as: Charity, Community, Non-Profit, Toyota