People with targets and jobs dependent upon meeting them will probably meet the targets – even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it.’

W. Edwards Deming

There are few people who have had more impact on the science and practical application process management than Dr. William Edwards Deming. His impact on the automotive industry and quality improvement is legendary, and many other industries have tried with varying degrees of success to implement his principles as well.

The History of a Quality Improvement Pioneer

William Edwards Deming was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant. Educated initially as an electrical engineer and later specializing in mathematical physics, he helped develop the sampling techniques still used by the U.S. Department of the Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In his book, The New Economics for Industry, Government, and Education, Deming championed the work of Walter Shewhart, including statistical process control, operational definitions, and what Deming called the Shewhart Cycle’ which had evolved into PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act). This was in response to the growing popularity of PDSA, which Deming viewed as tampering with the meaning of Shewhart’s original work.

Deming is best known for his work in Japan after WWII, particularly his work with the leaders of Japanese industry. That work began in August 1950 at the Hakone Convention Center in Tokyo when Deming delivered a speech on what he called Statistical Product Quality Administration.’ Many in Japan credit Deming as one of the inspirations for what has become known as the Japanese post-war economic miracle of 1950 to 1960, when Japan rose from the ashes of war on the road to becoming the second largest economy in the world through processes partially influenced by the ideas Deming taught.

The originality and innovation of Deming is that he took his philosophy, not from the world of management, but from the world of mathematics, and wedded it with a human relations approach. 

Learn more about Deming and his 14 points >>>

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the customer is not an inspector and the customer judges quality based on the value of the whole offering.

The Armand Feigenbaum quality philosophy has added much to the quality field. Learn more below.

Specifically, he claims:

Some companies have an outdated idea of quality and how to improve it. Managers think of quality as minimizing defects, especially in production. This aspect has long been an entry-level requirement in competition but is no longer enough from a customer perspective. Customers expect to buy products that work perfectly. They evaluate quality based on the value of the entire offer.

There is often a large gap between a company’s quality criteria and those of its customers”especially for car and computer manufacturers. Company statistics may indicate that quality has improved: products have fewer defects and more functions.  Meanwhile, however, sales are declining because customer satisfaction has dropped”whether it’s because the service is unsatisfactory, the user’s guide isn’t acceptable, or a spare part can’t be found anymore.  Customers increasingly take factors such as annoyance and time wasted into account. Many companies aren’t attuned to this.

What Feigenbaum is describing here is the popular claim of “products that are perfect in quality but nobody wants them”.  The dimension he adds, which is important and obvious, is that quality, from a customer’s perspective, is on the whole offering, not just the point-of-interaction with the product or immediate service.  In other words, if a product, which works perfectly, but their customer service has issues, then I will not be a satisfied customer.

Then, McKinsey asks: Why don’t these messages from customers get through?

Many companies don’t understand that new market conditions require extensive changes in management methods. Consider speed. Whereas companies used to be able to secure market leadership for a year through their investments in R&D, today it’s only a few months or weeks. And success in the ever-shortening periods between product launches greatly depends on whether companies can develop quality systems, processes, and technologies that enable shorter development, production, and sales times. Meanwhile, the company must guarantee full functionality of its products and services at market launch. This is also true of digital products such as software. There can no longer be any introduction periods in which the product functions poorly. The user is not an inspector.

McKinsey: What should companies do in response?

It’s not particularly complicated”and I’m afraid that’s where the problem lies: the messages seem too trivial for some people. Ask your customers. Don’t assume you know what they want. Talk to them”personally. How many CEOs still meet their customers in person? Have top managers visited customers in the past quarter? The answer is a key indicator of their quality leadership.

Companies must also analyze their processes from the customer’s perspective and determine the costs. Many people have a firm grasp of the costs of various business units such as purchasing or sales, but few know the extent of their quality costs because they don’t account for the relevant indicators. They need to include both the costs that are necessary to ensure quality, as well as those incurred because of a lack of quality”such as lost sales. Unnecessary internal costs caused by poorly organized processes are part of the calculation. For many businesses quality costs defined in these terms can reach 20 percent of revenues, whereas with well-organized companies this amount is only 5 to 10 percent or less. The competitive benefits that improvements here can bring, therefore, are enormous. But this is not slash and burn. When done well, these benefits are truly sustainable.

Feigenbaum shares some obvious, but not often practiced principles.  Indeed, principles and concepts worth reiterating.

The post Shoulders of Giants: Armand Feigenbaum Quaity Philosophy appeared first on 6sigma.

Following the summary table, you can view a 7:36 HD Video that explains a little more detail about each quality guru and their influence on Six Sigma.

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Perhaps Taguchi is best known for his influence on modern day website optimization, better known as A/B Testing or Multivariate Testing, which we’ll discuss shortly. Overall, his application of statistics for business specific problems is his greatest contribution with broad influence.

Genichi Taguchi History

Genichi Taguchi stressed quality right from the design stage and not just as an inspection. In short, he believed quality was related to process design. Dr Genichi Taguchi was born in 1924 in Japan. Initially, he served the Astronomical Department of the Navigation Institute of the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Second World War. Later, he joined the Ministry of Public Health and Welfare and the Institute of Statistical Mathematics. It was here that he worked with the eminent Japanese statistician Matosaburo Masuyama and gained vital insights into statistical analysis.

His expertise in statistics garnered him an opportunity to work with reputed pharmaceutical company Morinaga Seika and its sister company, Morinaga Pharmaceuticals. Taguchi then joined the Nippon Telegraph Electrical Communications Laboratory. Here, he was entrusted with the task of enhancing the productivity of the Research and Development (R & D) department. To achieve this objective, Taguchi trained the engineers to improve productivity through effective and simple techniques. Initially, Taguchi visited many Japanese companies to study different operating procedures. He would later educate the engineers on what he had learned. Eventually, he developed his own techniques, and his visits to companies helped him propagate his techniques. He stayed at the Nippon Telegraph Electrical Communications Laboratory for over 12 years

Soon, Japanese companies like Toyota adopted Taguchi’s techniques because they foresaw its great advantages. In 1951, he published a book that introduced the concept of orthogonal arrays. In his quest for a methodology for high quality, he met two legendary statisticians at the Indian Statistical Institute – R. A. Fisher and Walter A. Shewhart. After his interactions with them, he published a book on Design of Experiments in 1957.

Genichi Taguchi Contributions

Taguchi’s contributions have made its way into almost every facet of business. Unfortunately, few know about them while actively practicing what he either invented or had a large influence on. Here are a few of Taguchi’s contributions.

Taguchi Quality Loss Function

In 1970, Taguchi devised a new concept in quality called the Quality Loss Function. He published two more books this year, along with the third edition of Design of Experiments.

Unlike the western definition of quality, Taguchi defined quality loss, as loss imparted by the product to society from the time the product is shipped. The loss factor encompasses two losses:

1. Loss at the company end due to financial set-up, time, man-hours, productivity, rework, scrap, warranty cost, equipment downtime cost and loss of customer trust.
2. Loss at the customer end due to substandard product delivery, financial setbacks, distrust of customers, shared value deprecation, wasted time and project delays.

Taguchi Loss Function was developed on the premise that the greater the variation of a value from the standard, the greater the costs incurred. Taguchi Loss Function suggests that organizations must settle for options that cost the least. Organizations should thus make decisions after conducting a cost analysis and understanding all implications. It also
suggests that the lowest cost decision is not always the best one for the organization. This decision depends on organizational priorities

In its most basic form, Taguchi Loss Functions shows us the cost to the firm when we deviate from the standard. Below is an image of the Taguchi Loss Function:

Take a simple example of a tire manufacturer. This firm produces tires and a key component of high quality tires is the thickness of the rubber, for it induces safety and comfort and stability. The firm has statistically arrived at a “standard” tire thickness.

To apply the Taguchi Loss Function, suppose the firm produces tires whose thickness are less than standard or tires whose thickness is more than standard. In either case, there is a cost as indicated by the function above.

Design of Experiments (DOE)

Taguchi is also known for his contribution to multivariate testing, otherwise known as Design of Experiments or DOE. In a Design of Experiment, the central question is this:

How many different conditions do you need to experience to be able to reliably ascertain whether “A” is better than “B” or not?

As such, a Design of Experiment is centered around Factors, Responses, and Runs. We are interested in how a Factor affects a Response and we do in several Levels or Runs.

Here are 2 examples where Design of Experiments can be applied:

Taguchi Experiment: Microwave Popcorn

What is the best method to prepare microwave popcorn? The Response you want is this: the best outcome is the bag with the most popped corn kernels.

Below are the Factors:

• How long to cook the popcorn (between 3 and 5 minutes)
• What level of power to use on the microwave oven (between settings 5 and 10)
• Which brand of popcorn to use (Top Secret or Orville Redenbacher)

A/B Testing (Multivariate Testing)

Another application of Taguchi’s Design of Experiments is for testing elements of a website landing page that lead to the desired outcome, whether the outcome or conversion is defined as a sale, email sign-up, click through to the next page, etc.

In general, the steps to test the elements of a landing page are similar to the steps above:

1. Select elements on the landing page that we believe will influence sign-up
2. Create alternatives for each element
3. Create test “recipes” that combine these elements according to the Taguchi Methodology
4. Set up and run a concurrent multi variable test.

Here’s an example experiment:

• Headline Graphic on left, right, top of page Font selections in Body text, and varying sizes Color schemes in the footer and header Validation logos like Truste, BBB, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover Card, etc.

The elements on a landing page are Factors. The number of times and variations you run a Taguchi Test are the Runs. And, the outcome or Response is Conversion.

Conclusion

We owe much to Genichi Taguchi. Without knowing it, much of what we do today in terms of our statistical approach to “what is better a or b or c or d” can be credited to Genichi Taguchi.

The post Genichi Taguchi Contribution: A/B Testing and Design of Experiments appeared first on 6sigma.

To read my reviews of Wakamatsu’s book on Taiichi Ohno, please visit the links below.

• Taiichi Ohno on Standard Work
• Taiichi Ohno on Genchi Genbutsu
• Do Not Act Spoiled
• Learn from Previous Masters
• Wastes Hide, Disclose All Mistakes
• Truth and Understanding
• Innovation and Craftiness
• Teach Others to Think
• Intelligent Automation
• Taiichi Ohno on Leadership

Stand and Observe the Shop Floor

The author, Yoshihito Wakamatsu shares a poingnant story about a young Toyota worker he calls Mr. C:

Ohno pointed his finger at the floor and said to Mr. C, “Draw a circle here with chalk”.

Mr. C was confused but did as he was told to do, and drew a small circle on the floor.

“You Idiot! How are you going to stand in such a small circle?” Ohno asked.

Mr. C then redraw the circle large enough that he could stand in it. And so, he stood – for several hours until he had to use the restroom. On his way back from the restroom, Taiichi Ohno scolded Mr. C for not having asked permission.

At the end of the day, Taiichi Ohno asked:

“So, have you figured it out yet?” asked Ohno.

“I have no idea,” answered Mr. C.

“I see. You can go home now, but you will need to stand here tomorrow as well” answered Ohno.

Mr. C almost brought himself to ask Ohno what this was all about but he knew that Ohno would ask him to figure out the answer to his own question.

The next day, Mr. C came into work and met with Taiichi Ohno at lunch; then this conversation took place:

“Have you figured this out yet?”

“Yes, there’s a problem”, Mr. C answered.

Ohno did not ask him what he discovered, but insted pointed a finger at the shop floor and said “Observe how the shop floor workers conduct their operations. You told me that that you had continuously improved the shop floor but it has gotten worse because of your instructions! If you know what the real problem is now, go and fix right away.”

Taiichi Ohno’s approach in this story focused on three things:

1. Observe the shop floor closely.
2. See through a continuous improvement activity and confirm the positive results with your own eyes.
3. Let the student answer his or her own question.

In Wakamatsu’s words:

You will begin to establish the most effective solution by persistently searching for truths and observing every process on the shop floor repeatedly until the real issues are discovered. The Toyota Production System (TPS) has strongly encouraged this self-training process among their workers in order to promote the most effective problem-solving skills.

The Case of the Missing Kanban Cards

In one instance, Mr. D was instructed to train a component supplier on the Toyota Kanban system. After implementation, the supplier occasionally lost the Kanban Cards. This was a problem because if a Kanban did not reach the shop floor, then production would not begin, potentially leading to underproduction or not meeting customer demand. If the Kanban cards were alter found, that situation could potentially lead to overproduction, or producing where there is no demand. Mr. D’s job was to figure out and solve the missing Kanban card problem.

Instead of finding the root cause of the missing Kanban card problem, Mr. D increased the number of Kanban cards. When Taiichi Ohno found out about this, the following discussion took place:

“You did not even attempt to look for the missing Kanbans and decided to replace them with new ones without permission. Go back to the shop floor and find those missing Kanbans immediately.”

Mr. D was intimidated by Ohno’s furious behavior and spent more than one hour searching for the missing Kanbans. He had absolutely no luck and told Ohno, “I looked everywhere for the missing Kanbans, but I could not find them.”

Ohno replied, with the same level of intensity as before, “What do you mean by you looked everywhere? You only spent one hour of your time!”

After going back to the shop floor and, with more diligence, searched for the missing Kanban cards, he reported back to Taiichi Ohno:

“I found them finally!” Mr. D said happily.

Instead of responding proudly and joyfully, Taiichi Ohno said “Have you already implemented a solution for that?”

It turns out that Mr. D’s assignment wasn’t just to find the missing Kanban cards, but to diligently do root cause analysis and implement countermeasures for the missing Kanban card problem. Instead, all Mr. D did was search for the missing Kanban cards.

This story teaches us the following lessons:

1. Don’t implement superficial solutions, because they aggravate the original problem (increases the number of Kanban cards)
2. Diligently conduct root cause analysis and quickly implement countermeasures that reduce or eliminate the root cause(s)

In Wakamatsu’s words:

Ohno taught me the difference between “fixing” the problem and “patching” (first aid) the problem. When a machine breaks down it may require some first-aid repairs, such as replacing parts. However, the machine is most likely going to break down again, as the true cause of the problem was never fixed at the core. This is just “patching” the problem and is not “fixing” the problem. “Fixing” seeks out the true cause of a problem and removes it so that the same mistake is never repeated. “Fixing” is one of the most important practices at Toyota. Toyota also applies this practice beyond machineries to many other sorts of problems so that a strong-minded shop floor is established in the end.

Overconfidence, Humility, and the Sword

According to Wakamatsu, Taiichi Ohno was always weary of overconfidence in continuous improvement, calling it a “stumbling block” to further improvement. Taiichi Ohno shared this story to illustrate his point:

He used the story of a student and master of Japanese sword fighting. To become a sword fighter, a student trains under his master in the beginning. After vigorous training the student was able to win one game out of three from his respected master. If he thinks and feels satisfied here, “I can win one game out of three against my master, therefore there is nothing more for me to learn,” he ceases to improve himself beyond this point . . . Ohno thought that being satisfied with your own continuous improvement was like being content with winning only one game of sword fighting out of 3, and that such workers would be limiting their own potential to grow.

According to Wakamatsu, Ohno used to say:

“Forget about what you accomplished yesterday. Do not think about tomorrow either. Something is wrong and wasteful with what you are doing now and today. There is still room for continuous improvement as we speak.”

In the next post, I’ll cover the Taiichi Ohno’s belief in the following:

1. Increasing Production while limiting the number of workers is the only way to gain true success.
2. Lead them to an answer, but don’t give it away.
3. Reverse your thinking process.
4. Motivating people requires swaying their emotions.

The post Taiichi Ohno Quotes: Let the Student Answer His Own Question appeared first on 6sigma.

We are indebted to Sakichi Toyoda primarily for his invention of the Toyota Automatic Loom and, specifically, one piece that, at the time, was ingenious.

When the needle broke, the machine stopped.

Sakichi Toyoda created an innovation that would later become one of the pillars in the Toyota Production System (Lean). That pillar we now call Jidoka, sometimes called smart automation with a human touch or autonomation. Andon is also another way we see Jidoka manifested in real work.

Sakichi Toyoda’s contribution to the Toyota History is undisputed. Below is his history.

The information below is from the Toyota Boshuku website (http://www.toyota-boshoku.co.jp).

Sakichi Toyoda was born on February 14, 1867, in the village of Yamaguchi (now part of the city of Kosai), in Shizuoka Prefecture. An independent, free-spirited youth, Sakichi did not take to the family businesses of farming and carpentry.

In the spring of his twentieth year, Sakichi made the huge decision to leave the familiarity of his village and travel to Tokyo. There, Sakichi saw modern factories and the latest machinery. These fascinated Sakichi, and awoke in him a passion for machines and motors. Returning to his village, Sakichi began to conduct his own research, starting with the familiar objects around him. He devoted himself to improving the hand loom, which at the time was a clumsy and inconvenient device.

In 1890, Sakichi completed his first invention: the Toyota Wooden Hand Loom. Although he found buyers for the cloth woven by his looms, he sold almost none of the looms themselves. Sakichi next turned his attention to researching a power loom, and in November 1896 he invented the Toyoda Power Loom. This steam-driven loom, made of a combination of wood and iron, was Japan’s first power loom. The Toyoda Power Loom was the first step toward the full-scale development of power looms.

Sakichi’s looms won great acclaim, and he continued to invent new automated-loom technologies amidst repeated partnerships and breakups between companies like Mitsui & Co. and the textile industry. The economic crash caused by the Russo-Japanese War, however, struck a hard blow to the textile industry, and Sakichi was forced to give up his research and development efforts. In 1910, Sakichi quit his job at Toyoda Loom Works Ltd. and traveled to the USA and Europe to observe the loom industry there.

Seeing the well equipped laboratories there steeled Sakichi’s resolve, and the following year he completed Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, with 200 looms. He left the management of the company to his family, however, while he dedicated himself to the research and development of automated looms.

Almost immediately, Sakichi ran into a new problem: thread. If the quality of the thread is not reliable, then if the thread breaks, it is not possible to tell whether the fault lies with the loom or the thread. Sakichi thus decided to operate his own spinning mill, in order to ensure that he had a supply of higher-quality thread.

When World War I broke out in 1914, Japan’s industry was boosted by the wartime economy, and Toyoda Automatic Loom Works grew too large for one person to manage. On January 30, 1918, Sakichi incorporated his company, forming Toyoda Boshoku Corporation.

Although Toyota traces its roots back to Toyoda Boshoku, Sakichi’s death put the company’s continued existence in grave doubt. Under the wartime command economy, private companies were consolidated. Toyoda Boshoku was merged with an affiliate to form Chuo Spinning Company. Unable, however, to meet the demands of a final restructuring plan, it was then merged with Toyota Motor Co., Ltd. (now the Toyota Motor Corporation) — a former spin-off of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works (now Toyota Industries Corporation) — and spinning and weaving operations were suspended.

After war’s end in August 1945, the former employees of Toyoda Boshoku began working to resume spinning and weaving operations. After protracted negotiations with the central authorities, they were granted permission to restore the weaving and spinning works — albeit with some restrictions — and immediately formed a weaving and spinning department within the company. During the war, the government had requisitioned the majority of the spinning machines for scrap metal, but the employees repaired the remaining machines, and on May 15, 1950, Minsei Spinning Co., Ltd. was spun off from Toyota, making the company independent once more. The word “minsei” is Japanese for “private sector”; Risaburo Toyoda so named the company to avoid the dismantling of Japan’s old zaibatsu system, being carried out by the Allied Forces in order to privatize the economy.

The textile industry had prospered under Japan’s wartime “special procurement” boom, but after the boom ended the industry fell on hard times. In order to weather the downturn in the cotton trade, Minsei Spinning tried diversifying, first to wool and woolen goods, then to synthetics, and finally to non-fibers, but it continued to struggle to extract itself from this protracted difficult period.

The Toyota Group decided to support the company, and Toyota Motor chairman Taizo Ishida was appointed chairman of Minsei Spinning. Ishida’s plan for rebuilding the company was to: (1) replace the company’s management with new blood; (2) specialize in spinning and weaving; (3) merge the company with spinning and weaving affiliates; (4) change the company’s name to Toyoda Boshoku; and (5) build a state-of-the-art factory.

Ishida was appointed as chairman in June 1967, at the company’s 34th general shareholders’ meeting. At this meeting, he changed the name from Minsei Spinning to Toyoda Boshoku. Bound up in this name change was Ishida’s desire to carry on the heritage of the name given the company by Sakichi Toyoda, and give the company a prominent place on the world stage as part of the Toyota Group.

As the restructuring of the company proceeded apace, Japan was at the height of the Izanagi boom (a period of prosperity and economic development in the late 1960s). Seeing this as the perfect opportunity, Toyoda Boshoku focused on moving away from its traditional market-driven thread sales, and developing products that could ensure stable revenues not affected by the whims of the market. The company began full-scale production of pure-cotton knit combers (snipes), and luxury combers made from Egyptian cotton and targeting high-end customers. Recognizing the opportunities in industrial materials, the company also began producing fabrics for automobiles, and began supplying base material for car seats to Toyota.

In the early 1970s, Japan was hit by what it called the “Nixon Shock”: the rapid increase in exports from developing countries, coupled with a temporary halt on conversion between gold and the dollar by the US. The Nixon Shock pushed not just the textile industry but the entire Japanese economy into a severe recession. Toyoda Boshoku took drastic measures to stop the flow of red ink from its chronically unprofitable weaving division, stopping all in-house production; in 1973, it began production of automotive ignition coils, which had been transferred to it by Toyota and Nippondenso (now Denso).

This was the company’s first step toward the production of automotive components. The location was the company’s Kariya Plant. Employees were sent to Denso’s Anjo Works to learn the necessary skills.
Subsequently, the unique textile technologies that Toyoda Boshoku had cultivated were applied to automotive seat fabric. After strict testing for elasticity, contraction, and other features, the fabric was officially selected for use in the Celica and Sprinter. Toyoda Boshoku began delivering fabric to Arakawa Auto Body, Takashimaya Nippatsu Industries, and other seat manufacturers. The company had hit its stride in the production and sales of seat fabric, and its development expertise enabled it to diversify into the car interior field, including carpets and seatbelts.

The post Shoulders of Giants: Sakichi Toyoda appeared first on 6sigma.

Walter Andrew Shewhart (pronounced like “shoe-heart”, March 18, 1891 – March 11, 1967) was an American physicist, engineer and statistician, sometimes known as the father of statistical quality control and the person who developed the Control Chart.

From the late 1930s onwards, Shewhart’s interests expanded out from industrial quality to wider concerns in science and statistical inference. The title of his second book Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control (1939) asks the audacious question: What can statistical practice, and science in general, learn from the experience of industrial quality control?

Shewhart’s approach to statistics was radically different from that of many of his contemporaries. He possessed a strong operationalist outlook, largely absorbed from the writings of pragmatist philosopher C. I. Lewis, and this influenced his statistical practice. In particular, he had read Lewis’s Mind and the World Order many times. Though he lectured in England in 1932 under the sponsorship of Karl Pearson (another committed operationalist) his ideas attracted little enthusiasm within the English statistical tradition. The British Standards nominally based on his work, in fact, diverge on serious philosophical and methodological issues from his practice.

His more conventional work led him to formulate the statistical idea of tolerance intervals and to propose his data presentation rules, which are listed below:

1. Data have no meaning apart from their context (which is also a key concept of Genchi Genbutsu)
2. Data contain both signal and noise. To be able to extract information, one must separate the signal from the noise within the data.

Walter Shewhart: Influence

In 1938 his work came to the attention of physicists W. Edwards Deming and Raymond T. Birge. The two had been deeply intrigued by the issue of measurement error in science and had published a landmark paper in Reviews of Modern Physics in 1934. On reading of Shewhart’s insights, they wrote to the journal to wholly recast their approach in the terms that Shewhart advocated.

The encounter began a long collaboration between Shewhart and Deming that involved work on productivity during World War II and Deming’s championing of Shewhart’s ideas in Japan from 1950 onwards. Deming developed some of Shewhart’s methodological proposals around scientific inference and named his synthesis the Shewhart cycle (also know as the PDSA Cycle, PDCA Cycle and Deming Cycle).

During the 1990s, Shewhart’s ideas was put to use by a third generation of industrial managers as they adopt the Six Sigma approach to management. Shewart’s ideas form the basis for a significant portion of Six Sigma statistical methodology.

He died at Troy Hills, New Jersey in 1967.

source: Wikipedia, John Hunter

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As with most things, The Toyota Production System (later to be called Lean in America) has been influenced by previous thought and influences current thinking. Below is a historical timeline of how Lean evolved over time, its roots, in both a graphical format [1. source: rickladd.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/eoflmain.png] and textual format [2. source: Superfactory].

Here is the History of Lean, Six Sigma, and Continuous Improvement from 1883 to the Present Day.

Infographic: Historical Timeline of the Toyota Production System (Lean)

Textual: Historical Timeline of the Toyota Production System (Lean)

If you’d like to learn more about Lean history, check out these two books:

• The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker
• Lean CEO by Jacob Stoller

Read more articles about Lean and Six Sigma history >>>

Video: Historical Timeline on the Toyota Production System (Lean)

The first video on the History of Toyota was produced by the University of Toyota.

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Today, we’ll be remembering the Toyoda Automatic Loom.

In 1896, Sakichi Toyoda invented Japan’s first power loom called “the Toyoda Steam power loom”. This development increased productivity by twenty times and the quality of the textiles improved and caused a revolution in the textile industry in Japan. But here’s the subtle but very important discovery and principle:

when the needle broke, the machine stopped

Sakichi Toyoda created an innovation to the Loom that would later become one of the pillars in the Toyota Production System (Lean). That pillar we now call Jidoka, sometimes called “smart automation with a human touch” or “autonomation”.

In large part, Andon (“stop at first defect”) and (“Poka-Yoke”) are later developments that find their influence from the Loom.

So, when we:

1. Determine “normal” from “abnormal” conditions
2. Stop at First Defect (Andon)
3. Conduct Root Cause Analysis (5 Whys)
4. Implement Countermeasures
5. Reflect to see if the Countermeasures accomplished what we expected

We can thank the loom for its influence on current practices of Lean (PDCA for example) that find their roots back to an obscure invention – a sawing machine, the automatic loom.

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