Word: spearing
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Even as the company was catching the global No. 1, General Motors, the reputation of Toyota's cars was slipping. Spear, who apprenticed in its factories, says the problem was that the Toyota way--in which knowledge accumulated by élite cadres of engineers and assembly workers over many years is shared across the company--got diluted by the demands of production. "Even in the late '90s, people in Toyota would say, 'This is going to bite us in the ass,'" says Spear. "They just didn't know when...
...1990s, Toyota set out to become the world's top auto company. Being the best and being the biggest created a tension that Toyota couldn't resolve. Says MIT operations expert Steven Spear: "If quality is first, it drives a certain set of behaviors. If market share is the goal, it drives a different set of behaviors...
...another concept, jidoka, or "automation with a human touch." Think of it as built-in stress detection. At Toyota, that means work stops whenever and wherever a problem occurs. (Any employee can pull a cord to shut down the line if there is a problem.) That way, says Steven Spear of MIT, author of Chasing the Rabbit: How Market Leaders Outdistance the Competition and an expert in the dynamics of high-performance companies, "When I see something that's not perfect, I call it out, figure out what it is that I don't know and convert ignorance to knowledge...
...hundreds of work-team specialists and other experts were transplanted from Japan for several years to make sure the new plant fully absorbed the Toyota way. That kind of hand-holding may still be possible, but it isn't as easy. How can that be fixed? Says Spear: "The big deal is this question, Does an organization know how to hear and respond to weak signals, which are the problems, or does it have to hear strong signals? You have to listen to weak signals. By the time you get to strong signals, it's too late...
...Toyota set out to become the world's top auto company. Being the best and being the biggest created a tension that Toyota couldn't resolve, says MIT operations expert Steven Spear: "If quality is first, it drives a certain set of behaviors. If market share is the goal, it drives a different set of behaviors." Even as Toyota was catching up to the global No. 1, General Motors, the reputation of its cars was slipping. Spear, who has apprenticed in Toyota factories, says the problem was that the "Toyota way" - in which knowledge accumulated by élite cadres...