…You know you’re in some trouble. The AP reports that local governments are adopting the kaizen principles that launched Toyota to the production efficiency monster it is today. And the bureaucratic nightmares which once defined government inefficiency are being massively reduced. For those who are not familiar with “the five whys,” the AP describes kaizen as “a way of thinking that diagrams a job step by step, puts workers at the center, gives them a sense of the total process they’re involved in, and then frees them to think of ways to best do their jobs.” Or, as the quality services director at the Ohio Department of Administrative Services puts it,”You cannot filibuster, you cannot stall. You look at this thing and say ‘OK, justify that.'” The concept has become the hot thing in local government the nation over. As one strangely-picked example goes, the average time to process death certificates in Maine recently dropped from 95 days to five after the state introduced kaizen principles. “We got calls from people saying they want to die in Maine now because they can get the death records so quickly,” claims a Maine HHS honcho. Any of those calls come from Detroit?
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
Kaizen is just a foreign word for American concepts that Americans taught the Japanese; the book in the above picture refers to Kaizen alternatively as the Deming Improvement Cycle. Unlike the arrogant Detroit automakers, the Japanese valued people with ideas about how to improve quality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shewhart_cycle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen
Does this mean GM and Chrysler are relocating to Maine? They’re awfully close to needing death certificates…
A prophet is without honor in his own country… for a while, anyway. Sorry, Deming!
If only we could expect the Japanese to extend the same helping hand to a ruined American industry that the United States did to the Japanese industrial base sixty years ago.
If only we could expect the Japanese to extend the same helping hand to a ruined American industry that the United States did to the Japanese industrial base sixty years ago.
They did. Toyota built a school called NUMMI, which showed how to take a losing plant and turn it into a winner, in the US and with union labor. Instead of being humbled and taking notes, GM decided to ditch class and insult the teacher, instead.
Now that they have failed to graduate, they are busy blaming the teacher, instead of themselves, for their failure to do their homework.
I see scant evidence of this being adopted at the municipal, provincial or federal levels here…
Here’s hoping.
And at the end of five whys, when the result is “fire yourself. eliminate the position,” what do you think government employees will do?
Jack Baruth,
Please contact me via email.
rokem@netzero.net
“a way of thinking that diagrams a job step by step, puts workers at the center, gives them a sense of the total process they’re involved in, and then frees them to think of ways to best do their jobs.”
Can’t really think of a better way to do it than that.
I’m a proud resident of Maine, the Best State to Die In. I think it’s time for an update to the “Vacationland” motto on the license plates.
They did. Toyota built a school called NUMMI, which showed how to take a losing plant and turn it into a winner, in the US and with union labor. Instead of being humbled and taking notes, GM decided to ditch class and insult the teacher, instead.
Unlike how the US magnanimously helped rebuild Japan and Germany (the United States has a tradition of giving a helping hand to our former enemies, though the South preferred killing black Republicans to reconstruction), NUMMI or the transplant facilities was not selfless at all, just political maneuvering.
Toyota needed a plant in the US and GM needed rebadged Corollas and a peak into Toyota’s manufacturing methods. A marriage of convenience for both parties.
A marriage of convenience for both parties.
Except somebody was dozing through the relationship.
GM had ample opportunities to learn from the experience. They obviously learned very little. That is their fault, and their fault alone.
One reason that GM is in such trouble is because they consistently fail to acknowledge their mistakes and change their behavior. They act like a bunch of petulant children, blaming everyone else for everything, complaining how nobody understands them, and never stepping up to the plate to take responsibility for anything.
Instead of blaming the Japanese or whining for help, they should take a look in the mirror and find a bit of humility. It is getting tedious, and at this rate, increasingly expensive for me as a taxpayer.
Those Maine-iacs and their gallows humor…
Whenever W. Edwards Deming is mentioned I feel the need to mention Homer Sarasohn, Deming’s predecessor in Japan who actually did many of the things Deming is credited for. Here’s a story about him from a few years ago:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2000/pulpit_20000525_000408.html
Well the Marshall plan wasn’t exactly totally selfless either. It would be cheaper to help them get back on their feet than to impose heavy peace terms and end up with Hitler part 2 as a bunch of pissed off Germans/Japanese decided to try for some revenge 30 years later, or at best ended up under some minor tyrant.
It was very wise and farsighted thing to do, but it was motivated by enlightened self-interest.
Ronnie,
The US didn’t lend a hand to Japan and Germany because they were kind and nice. They did it to keep the Soviets out. This country never went around giving away free lunch :)
We are now reaping the rewards by having a friendly nation (as opposed to China) building fine cars on our soil and selling them to us at a great price. Cash flow be damned – I’d rather pay extra welfare tax and have my cars assembled by a robot and engineered by a company with a clue. After all, my industry is solid enough to attract untold fortunes from overseas, so I’m doing my part. Are you?
damn impresario what a great read!
Part of the success the japanese found there was do to starting from failure, which is a key step GM is trying their damndest to skip past.
Love it. Occam’s Razor put into practice.
There’s a really good site, that is unfortunately down right now, on Heuristics, which are similar Logical tools. eg: Contracting to expand, Expanding to Contract, etc.
Definitely a fun read, and something that changes the way you think.
http://greenlightwiki.com/heuristic/Heuristic is good, but it’s 500 right now.
The Wayback Machine Does have most of it here, though: http://web.archive.org/web/20061221020815/greenlightwiki.com/heuristic/TheHeuristicWiki
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristics
It’s funny, b/c I think one of the principals of either Kaizen or something else like it, is that Project Managers should be so good at hiring, training, and architecting systems that they eventually work themselves out of a job, become one with the air and join the collective unconscious at the Nirvana concert.
Marshall Plan was wonderful. Yes it tilted tables away from the Sovs. We did well by doing good. Can’t say better than that for any plan.
I now turn to this site for interesting mix of mild politics and history with peripheral car relevance; I read Jalopnik and Chuck Goolsbie for steady uninterrupted stream of interesting car guy car stuff. Well if you love cars then you have to wonder where they come from, and why, eh? No bad.
Oh and the municipal workers, after implementing Demings wonderful approach? They can expand scope of work with the savings or they can reduce total costs (headcount).
Deming does indeed get much of the credit, but Toyota and many Japanese industry claim they were doing many of these things in the early 1930s. Toyota defend their TPS as totally theirs.
I know many in the US would like it to be so, but transfer of this information is never as simple as “The US Showed Them How To Do It”.
For an interesting insight into Deming’s frustration with American business leaders it’s worth a read of Dr. Deming: The American Who Taught the Japanese About Quality.
It’s required reading at our company.
The Toyota Way by Linker is also an interesting insight into the visits to Toyota by American automotive companies.
Also, for those that keeping mentioning the war, there was not much magnanimous about the US and Germany. It was a race with the Soviets to grab as much industry and technology as possible.
From the AP article: “In Maine, it occurred to someone during a kaizen session that death certificates could be issued months faster if copies, instead of the originals, were sent to be copied to microfiche archives. That way, vital records employees, who can’t release a death certificate without the original in hand, could speed up the process.”
The supervisors who tolerated this outrageous snafu were brain-dead. They just hadn’t gotten their death certificates yet.
Such chowderheads remind me of when I moved to another state. The phone in our new home could be used to call out, but I couldn’t receive calls. I called the phone company to get my account activated. The lady said it would take several days, until a repair tech could get to my house and hook up the phone — the very phone I was using to talk to her! Well, the lady was right about one thing: it did take several days. Eventually, someone at the central office took a minute to get my inbound service activated.
impresario :
December 29th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Whenever W. Edwards Deming is mentioned I feel the need to mention Homer Sarasohn, Deming’s predecessor in Japan who actually did many of the things Deming is credited for. Here’s a story about him from a few years ago:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2000/pulpit_20000525_000408.html
That was a really interesting read! Thanks for linking that!
The federal employees I have dealt with while selling software would simply reject this as against union rules. So would at least one of the auto company call center unions.