The Toyota Way is not merely an engineering marvel, it is about the people who make it a success.
When Akio Toyoda took over as President of Toyota Motor Corp last month, the first thing he said was that he would get the world’s top automaker back to basics.
At a time when Toyota is going through the worst downturn in history (two months ago, the company reported the biggest annual loss in its history —$4.4 billion), the grandson of the company’s founder said he would ‘reinstil dedication’ to the famed Toyota Production System (TPS). This was important as analysts said the company somewhat deviated from full adherence to TPS due to its rapid expansion all over the world.
What is TPS all about? The system has often been compared to squeezing water from a dry towel. What it means is that it is a system for total waste-elimination. Waste here does not mean what is immediately obvious — it means anything that does not add value to the process. The end-result: making the vehicles ordered by customers in the quickest and most efficient way, in order to deliver them as quickly as possible.
Though the system sounds more like a solid engineering and manufacturing design, in reality, it’s not just that. For, Toyota has been remarkably open in letting outsiders — even its competitors — to study its operations. Many competitors have tried to emulate TPS by benchmarking their operations against TPS, but none has been able to match the Japanese car giant’s sustained production of high-quality, low-cost, short-lead-time production over the past many years.
The reason is simple: TPS is much more than just a brilliantly-designed engineering marvel; it’s about the people who make it a success. HR experts call it the unique ‘Toyota way’ of working that recognises the fact that the products are not the result of a single person’s effort. They are more the result of a collective effort of many people, each doing a small part of the larger whole. So while star performers are necessary, the company isn’t chasing them as the focus is more on developing a human-system that works with clockwork precision and the collective performance is greater than what a few exceptionally-talented people can achieve.
At the heart of this is the belief that even ‘creative’ skills can be taught if proper training is given. In fact, Toyota believes that pure talent comprises only 10 per cent of the total work. In their book, Toyota Talent, published by Tata McGraw Hill in India, authors Jeffrey K Liker and David P Meir give the example of a very creative endeavour — oil painting. Many of us assume that painting requires artistic talent that is beyond our personal capability. In fact, if we were to sit beside a painter as she created her masterpieces and stopped her now and then to ask ‘What are you doing?’ or ‘What is important about how you are doing it?’ we would see that there are, in fact, identifiable and consistent principles at the core.
For example, if the painter desires to depict ‘depth’ (there is no real depth in a two-dimensional painting, only the perception of depth) between an object and the background, the outside perimeter of the object is highlighted with a darker line and perhaps some shading around the object in the background area. Painters have, of course, practised these tricks of the trade for centuries.
This means that if one looks more closely within any creative endeavour, it is possible to find certain aspects that are easily identifiable and thus teachable. The problem most companies face is that people find complicated tasks daunting as they tend to first consider the unique or creative aspects instead of the common and teachable aspects.
But HR experts say while all this may be suitable in a Japanese environment, Toyota needs to localise its production and human-system if it wants to succeed in other parts of the world. The good thing is that Toyota has already started such an experiment in India.
Toyota Tech, its first training institute outside of Japan, is a free-of-cost initiative. Located at Bidadi near Bangalore, the residential institute offers training to bright students from rural schools, to mould them into world-class technicians in automobile-manufacturing and plant-maintenance.
The institute offers a three-year course in Toyota’s best manufacturing practices to class 10-pass students with 60 per cent marks. The students who belong to schools in rural Karnataka and from families which cannot afford their higher education also receive lessons on personal-grooming, cleanliness and discipline.
Training youth in-house also helps build loyalty for Toyota which sends its best engineers and technicians for specialised training in Japan. However, there is no bond to be signed and students are free to join other automakers. It’s a different story though that most prefer to stay on at Toyota.
