What people get wrong copying Toyota
People love copying Toyota. Toyota even willingly opens up its factory doors to curious people so they can have a look around. Many people do. With excitement, they start implementing all the tools and processes that they see Toyota succeed with. They add Kanban boards, mark the floor with tape, and copy all the tools they see. But in 6 months, when the dust settles, there is no real impact. No lasting value. How come?
- Reverse engineering doesn’t work. What makes Toyota special are not the tools and processes. It is the fact that Toyota is a continuous adaptive organization. You can not reverse engineer your way into becoming one.
- They are copying the wrong things. Toyta is like an iceberg. Above the water you see the visible things, such as kanban boards and other tools. However, hidden and submerged under the water are the things that you do not see. These invisible things are the most important, like the management routines and lean ways of thinking. These invisible routines created the visible tools and processes.
- There is no finish line. The objective is not to use a certain tool or process. The objective is to continuously (meaning every day) make higher quality goods and services by reducing waste to survive in an ever competitive landscape and to develop the capability of the organization through people to keep improving, adapting, and satisfying dynamic customer demand. If you only copy the tool, you miss the forest (the real objective of satisfying customer demand and improving quality) for the trees (the lean tools and processes). There is no finish line. There is no one tool as it will keep evolving.
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