UNLOCKING the Secrets of TOYOTA: 3 Mind-Blowing Insights You Can Apply Today
Last week, Ryan and the team were invited to a behind-the-scenes tour of the Toyota Factory in Derby where a car comes off the line every 88 seconds.
In this episode, we share three mind-blowing takeaways from this trip, including:
What a “quality control tunnel” is and how you can build one for your business
Why stopping the line actually speeds up production
Developing a people-centric culture that turns members into leaders
The message picking up rubbish sends to your team
How Toyota UK has never made anyone take a compulsory redundancy
And what you can expect from Toyota UK’s official partnership with Lean Made Simple
Check it out!
Links:
Book a Toyota UK Tour: https://tlmc.toyotauk.com/
Send a voice message/question to the show: https://www.speakpipe.com/LeanMadeSimple
Eight Wastes Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-hTsSJdhHI
Welcome to Lean Made Simple: a podcast for people who want to change their business and their lives one step at a time. I’m Ryan Tierney from Seating Matters, a manufacturing company from Limavady, Northern Ireland that employs 60+ people. Almost ten years ago, I came across this thing called “lean” and it transformed my life… now I want to share this message with as many people as possible.
This podcast unpacks our learnings, lessons and principles developed over the last decade in a fun, conversational way that will hopefully empower you on your own business journey — whether you’ve been doing lean for years or are just starting out!
Check it out on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other podcast platform by searching “lean made simple.”
Thanks and all the best.
— Ryan Tierney
Magic Moment 1: Why Toyota Stop Their Production Line
Magic Moment 2: How Toyota Take Culture To The Next Level
Magic Moment 3: Toyota's Unbelievable Quality Control Process
Full Transcription of Episode
Ryan: The key to getting faster is to actually go slower. Because they're making it better.
And that's why they're not only the best car manufacturers in the world, they're the best manufacturer in the world.
Matthew: Hello and Welcome to Lean Made Simple, a podcast about transforming your business and your life one step at a time.
Today we're completely breaking format. We're doing something really, really different and that is we're actually going to do a little reflective episode on our recent trip to Toyota.
So we have three topics that we want to cover three big, big takeaway, mind blowing things that Ryan discovered on his last few trips. The first one is quality control. So hit us with it.
Ryan: So, obviously, this is my passion. I eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff.
So, to get to work with Toyota, the best in the world, and translate their message to companies and organizations all over the world, I feel privileged to be in that position. I really do. So
Toyota talk about building quality into the process and yes they do, they absolutely do, but they also have about a hundred people checking and checking and checking and double checking and somebody checking the check. The systems that they have built to check the finished car before it goes to the customer is mind blowing.
Matthew: It's like a work of art in and of itself.
Ryan: It's unbelievable. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. Like one person's job was to check to open and close the door to make sure it just felt right. Then they would just tweak it a little bit with a, like a wee key or a wee tool and just do it again. You know, that was one person's job.
The next person's job was to check the wipers and the indicators and maybe check the keys to make sure the doors are and unlocking. Like 90 or 100 people, all in a series, all in a row, checking and checking and checking.
And then, at the very end, which we couldn't believe, then what they do is they take 1 in 10 cars off, and take it to the side, and go through that car with a fine tooth comb. And I just had this realization, like for us and our company, and for probably all the companies and business owners that are listening to this podcast right now, how much time do you put into the quality control before your customer gets your product or service?
Matthew: Are you listening to this podcast right now, thinking, I'm 100 percent confident that we send zero defects to the customer. And I don't think many people are listening to this thinking that, because when I seen what Toyota were doing, I really thought, well, we need to change things up here big time.
And the thing that like really stood out was You know, it's this loud manufacturing environment, there's a lot of things going on, you know, there's a lot of, like, hard, hard work that's happening there, and then there's these guys sitting there, and it looks like a flippin like, high end watch showroom, where they're standing there with these white gloves, and they're feeling the cars, and that wee fuel flap, they're opening and closing it, does that feel just about right?
You know, you talk about a lot on this podcast, One of the big things about lean is respect for people. And, you know, as a consumer and a customer, looking at what Toyota are doing there, I just feel the respect. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's made me just look at Toyota's in a whole new way, where I'm like, whoa. The respect and care that goes into every single car is just phenomenal.
Ryan: Yeah, it's incredible.
Where's the action there for you? Actually this week and next week we are re evaluating our entire quality control process.
Matthew: Wow.
Ryan: So can every single company listening to this podcast learn from Toyota?
Absolutely.
We're actually building a light tunnel. I'll probably share a video of it sometime. But Toyota have this light tunnel, the QC tunnel they call it, where every single car goes through.
And it shines loads of light around the entire vehicle so they can see if there's any minor blemishes in the paintwork or whatever. So we're actually building a light tunnel to put our products through.
Matthew: Incredible.
Ryan: And it's really to send a signal to everybody in the organization that this is how serious we are taking quality control.
The next person to see this product... After it goes through the light tunnel is the customer. And are we sending a defect to the customer? Well, we're going to make sure that we do everything in our power not to.
Matthew: Phenomenal. Okay, second point, people centric culture. Again, this is something we've heard before.
This is something we've read about. What stood out to you afresh whenever you were standing there,
literally on the assembly line at Toyota UK? Yep.
Ryan: So we were fortunate to have got a guided tour around the entire facility.
Like we went places that no one has ever got access to before with a, with a camera.
And we were able to stand right beside the person making the dashboard lines and ask them questions. And we were able to see where the paint work was being done. We were able to ask the questions to the guys who were putting the seats under the car.
But what I noticed when we were walking around. Was that Alan and Paul, the two Toyota executives that were with us, knew everybody's name. And I really couldn't believe it. Like two and a half thousand people, huge plant. And they were saying, Oh, hi Mark. How's it going? Oh here Sandra, how are you? How's your son?
How did the football game go? They absolutely knew everybody's name. They were waving at people. They were saying hello. They were asking about their families, asking about their pets. Asking about their hobbies, and what I realised there and then was that this is a people centric organisation. People are absolutely at the heart of Toyota.
And this, this is why they are the company that they are. And this is why thousands of companies from all over the world strive to be at that Toyota level.
Matthew: Yeah, and it was crazy, I remember standing in, I think they called it the obeya room, which means the war room. And you can see, and it was public for everyone, so visually how you can progress through the organization.
And actually, both of the guys, Alan and Paul, that we had the chance to interview and spend time with, they both came in on the shop floor and they worked their way up. And the fact that actually... Toyota cares so much about developing their people, that they have it visual, they have the clear path, and they're constantly trying to get people to move to the next level.
It's, it's incredible.
Ryan: It is, exactly.
And we noticed as well, we were talking about this before we started recording, that like, maybe three times, Alan bent down and picked up like a wee bit of rubbish from the shop floor and put it in the bin. Yeah. And the signal that's sending to the team leaders, to the members that are working on the lane.
He's sending a very direct signal that this is how we operate and I'm going to show, uh, in front of everyone, you know, he's, he's living what he's talking about. Yeah.
Matthew: I thought it was mad as well, like their, uh, redundancy policy or whatever they called it. Yeah. Like that was pretty crazy as well.
Ryan: Yeah, the fact that Toyota UK have never made anybody take compulsory redundancy is amazing. It really is. If they create efficiencies on the line. And there's one person that is no longer needed due to improvements, they will reallocate that person to somewhere else in the plant, you know, straight away that takes the fear out of improvement.
It takes the fear out of process improvement. It takes the fear out of this. Sometimes lean is seen as this thing that, you know, reduces the workload to the point where, will I be made redundant? Sure. And Toyota have removed that fear to allow people to maintain their creativity and come up with improvements.
Matthew: Absolutely.
So I'll probably ask you for all these takeaways, just kind of doing this on the fly.
What is your actionable takeaway from what you witness from a people centric culture perspective? Because again, I look at what's going on at Lean Made Simple and I'm like, these guys, they know everyone's names. It's one big family. What improvement opportunities have you seen after this trip?
Ryan: Yep, good question. So, You'll always see me writing with a notebook and taking notes, and one of the things we try and do when we want to create change or create a new direction is that we open it out to the wider team, so at our morning meeting last week, we shared our reflections and our learnings from Toyota, and we said, does anybody have any ideas on how we can encourage a more people centric organization, a more people centric culture in ideas.
And somebody came up with an idea that we're starting next week. Wow. So we're, we're really doing this. It's called Coffee Roulette. Where we're getting all the names in a hat. And at every morning meeting, two or three names are going to be picked out.
And it's like, okay, Jenny from the sewing room, you're having coffee with Cody from the welding at one o'clock today. Next day is, okay, Noel from production, you're having coffee with, Dervla from marketing today. So it's to get people to get to know each other better. We're calling it Coffee Roulette. And that's one of the ideas that one of our team members came up with. So we're actually applying it. The biggest gap in the world is the gap between knowing and doing.
So we know we need to get more like Toyota. We know we have to be a more people centric organization. So we have to do knowing and doing. So we, we have taken action on that already. Yeah.
Matthew: Phenomenal. Third and final big takeaway was Jidoka. So again, read it in Toyota way. Still not 100 percent sure of what it is. So what actually is Jidoka and how did you see it in action?
Ryan: So Jidoka, very simply put, to make it all very simple, Jidoka, the way we talk about Jidoka is we stop and fix.
So it's a Japanese concept which means stop the line or stop and fix when you have a problem. And again, it's in all the Toyota books. And I was kind of going there thinking, do they actually do it?
Or is it just a concept that they kind of talk about? But, I'm not exaggerating, I think the line must have stopped 30, 35, 40 times during our factory tour.
It really did stop. Aye over the two days, yeah. It did, yeah. And each person has the authority to reach up and pull this physical Andon cord and stop the line And everything stops, and they go to the source of the problem, find out what's wrong, come up with a solution, figure it out, and then they they start the line again.
And I thought this is, this is crazy they actually do it. But how many times in our small businesses or in SMEs or people that are listening to this podcast,
how many times do you have a problem and you just keep, going. You don't stop and fix it. You just say, Oh, it'll be grand. We'll fix it sometime.
We'll fix it when we have time. So I really internalized the power of The key to getting faster is to actually go slower.
Wow. The key to increasing output is to actually stop when there's a problem. Yeah. Because
they're making it better. And that's why they're not only the best car manufacturers in the world, they're the best manufacturer in the world.
Matthew: Yeah, that's mad. I'm not from a manufacturing background, obviously, as you know. Am I right in saying that? Normally in manufacturing, it's like, if you stop that line, you're literally going to get beheaded. It's like, keep the line going at
all costs.
Ryan: Absolutely. Most companies, probably 99 companies out of 100 are production focused.
How can we get as much product out the door as possible? If there's any problems or any issues, we'll fix them when we get time. Just move it to the side and... When we get around to it, we'll fix the problem. That's not how Toyota think. And we've seen it before our very eyes. They stop and fix.
Matthew: Yeah, you said on an episode recently the importance of creating a blame free culture.
And, so,
you're actually encouraged to stop the line and you're not in trouble. You're actually, like, you're almost rewarded. You may be able to help me understand or translate what was going on, but when they pulled the line, wasn't there like a team leader that would run over to them and like, what did the team leader do?
Like help them and support them?
Ryan: There was, yeah. So, Toyota is very, very systemised in that when somebody pulls the Andon card and stops the line, a team leader, it comes up on a board, like a visual screen. Line 7 has stopped and the team leader knows exactly where to go to fix the problem. But, I didn't hear this at TMUK, but I've heard this in Toyota in Japan when I was there.
That the first thing that the team leader says to the member when they stop the line is, Thank you. Thank you for stopping the line wow. I compare that thinking to a normal company that...
Matthew: Stop this line again and you're going to be out the door.
Ryan: That's right. Exactly. So the, the, the cultural differences are just so vast.
Matthew: And for you then, what's your practical takeaway? Because you obviously, you've known about Jidoka for a while. On the back of this trip, is there anything that you would do differently?
Ryan: Yep, there absolutely is and we're doing it straight away. We stopped, we stopped this week. And we're doing the new quality control process that I was talking about earlier.
Because we realized this is Jidoka. This is a time to stop and fix. We're going to stop, we're going to reset, we're going to rethink how we're doing our quality control. And then we'll start again. So stop and improve, stop and improve, stop and fix. That's, that's the way we think. Or it's the way we're getting better at thinking.
Landing the plane then. Uh, we are really excited about...
Matthew: The upcoming content with Toyota and to have that access that you talked about, it was amazing to have the relationships with Paul Blayj you know, showing us around, giving up two full days of his time, getting to walk around the Gemba, walk around the factory with Alan Weir. I think we joked it was like walking around Disneyland with Walt Disney.
Do you know what I mean? Like just like a once in a lifetime opportunity. And the fact that we now get to share this with the wider community is amazing. Such an honor and such a privilege, do you just want to share with the listeners? How that amazing opportunity even came about in the first place?
Ryan: Yeah, I'd love to. So it's actually really, really exciting. Uh, about two months ago, I got a LinkedIn message from a really senior person at Toyota. And obviously I've been studying Toyota for almost a decade, almost 10 years. Read all the books, so I hold Toyota in very high regard.
So we jumped on a call, a Zoom call. And he said that Toyota would like to do, uh, a collaboration with me and with Lean Made Simple, uh, which was really, really exciting. And I flew over and visited them for a, for a few meetings. Uh, they give me a tour of their factory in Derby, their, uh, final assembly plant where they make the Corolla, Toyota Corolla.
And I was absolutely blown away by everything they were doing. They were really hospitable, And at the end of the two days, we kinda agreed, uh, a way forward where... Uh, Lean Made Simple, and Toyota would collaborate, officially collaborate.
Class. It is exciting. It's very exciting. Uh, Toyota have a separate arm, for those who maybe don't know, Toyota have a separate division called TLMC, Toyota Lean Management Center, and this is a separate arm where Toyota, senior Toyota lean. Uh, leaders go out to other companies and support them with lean and they work with some amazing, uh, organizations, uh, throughout the UK.
So Toyota approached me to almost be a translator. not translating from Japanese to English. But translating from complexity to simplicity. Right. Because they've seen the work we're doing with Lean Made Simple. They've seen that. We can take really complex, lean philosophies. And boil them down to really simple concepts that any organization can get on board with. So,
I want to make sure that the content that we're putting out is really valuable and really practical.
So that somebody can watch the videos or the podcasts that we're doing with Toyota and go, ah, that's what Toyota are doing. Yeah. And that's how I can implement it. So it's really going to be an exciting journey and we're only at the very beginning of it.
Matthew: yeah, I agree with you. I'm really, really excited to see where we go from here. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you very much for spending this time with us. Hope that you found it valuable. Um, we really look forward to sharing this Toyota content with you in the next few weeks. Have a great rest of your day.
And we look forward to seeing you again next time. Cheers. Thank you.