WLEI - Lean Enterprise Institute’s Podcast

In the first half of their podcast Better Thinking Faster, Josh Howell, Mark Reich, and Art Smalley discussed solving problems just in time and how the speed of quality problem solving depends on the level of the organization and the types of problems to be found there. In this second half of the podcast, they examine unique traits of problem solving at Toyota that help employees — frontline to senior executives — solve problems better and faster, characteristics that many companies attempting to be lean fail to grasp. Create Experiential Learning Many leaders attempt to apply lean based on reading about it and the management processes and tools involved, says Art, Toyota veteran and author of Four Types of Problems. That’s helpful, but it lacks lean problem-solving experiences. For example, working on a line and solving many small problems daily provides formative learning within Toyota that’s carried forward as a team member advances into management and executive ranks. “Many of us who encounter these ideas later in life, when we’re at higher levels in our career and in our organizations, don’t always get that opportunity,” says Josh, LEI President. He admires Toyota for onboarding individuals, even white-collar executives, by throwing them onto the line “to work at that level of detail and all the opportunity that could be found therein, to just set a mindset that can be very useful to you even as you get into higher level, longer cycle time, more ambitious, more complex work.” So what is an executive, without Toyota-like onboarding and problem-solving experiences, supposed to do? Mark, LEI Chief Engineer Strategy and author of Managing on Purpose, says they can at least go to line, to where the work is done, and experience it by observing. He’s seen executives who, when going to the frontline, are astounded by “the amount of difficult, unnecessary, frustrating work that happens minute to minute, day to day.” That helps them to experience the precise nature of work and problems there, but they also must care “that people shouldn’t have to work that way, and people are working like that in many organizations. I think Toyota leaders cared, and not just about the shopfloor ... but about everybody in the organization and that everybody in the organization had value-creating work.” Art sees it as LEI’s purpose to close the learning gap among leaders not coming out of Toyota and somehow help executives gain the experiences he and Mark encountered when working there: “Mark and I got it through line work, working in Toyota, and in our careers of seeing it at various levels. Other people need to kind of come to that awareness, have the fish scales removed from their eyes in different ways.” Examine the Process behind Outcomes Toyota’s unique approach to problem solving includes an obsession with going well beyond the cause of a problem to determine how a process or processes contributed to the outcome and cause. Art cites the example of a failed launch at one of Toyota’s overseas plants. Equipment vendor problems contributed to poor outcomes. Instead of citing “failed vendor, not our problem” and moving on, every aspect of the business pertaining to precision equipment that went to overseas operations was thoroughly analyzed to ensure the next overseas launch would be better than the last. It turns out a variety of documentation, support materials, and training that accompanied equipment going overseas was poor, and Toyota worked for a year or more to make it right. “Toyota is very good about thinking about the process that led to the end result,” says Art. “Most people want to be critical and criticize the end result. Toyota will go back, back, back, back, back. What were our initial assumptions and thought processes and conditions that led us down this path?” Mark and Art say this approach is not for Toyota to find blame, but to ensure it does not happen again: 5 Whys not the 5 Whos. Solve All P

In this edition of The Management Brief, Carl Klemm reflects on his journey from GM to Toyota, sharing lessons on leadership maturity, long-term management thinking, and creating cultures of trust, respect, and continuous improvement.

In this edition of The Design Brief, Eric Ethington and Matt Zayko share how skilled chief engineers build strong teams and robust product and process development systems. They discuss essential chief engineer skills, the role of conflict in innovation, system integration, and real stories of lean product and process development in action.

In this edition of The Management Brief, Josh Howell and Mark Reich talk with Rich Calvaruso, Senior Director of the Lean Management Office at GE Appliances. Rich shares how GE reshored manufacturing, built lean systems beyond kaizen events, and developed leaders through hands-on immersion. His core message: develop people and improve process at the same time.

In this edition of The Management Brief, LEI’s Josh Howell and Mark Reich talk with Jamie Bonini, President of Toyota’s TSSC, about how Toyota develops people and spreads TPS. They explore the role of CI groups, differences between Toyota’s internal and external approaches, and why building leaders’ problem-solving capability—not just installing tools—is key to lasting performance.

In this edition of The Management Brief, Jim Lancaster, Owner and CEO of Lantech and author of The Work of Management, joins LEI’s Josh Howell and Mark Reich to reflect on Lantech’s decades-long lean journey. From early Shingijutsu-led workshops to building a resilient management system, Jim shares lessons on leadership, sustaining improvement, and how Lantech grew 75% since 2020 by staying true to lean principles—even through the pandemic.

In this episode of The Management Brief, Josh Howell and Mark Reich speak with Scott Heydon, former Starbucks VP of Global Strategy and current Senior Lean Coach, about his journey from top-down problem-solver to hands-on lean leader. Scott shares lessons from Starbucks’ lean transformation, the power of learning from the frontlines, and advice for leaders looking to support real improvement: go to the gemba and ask better questions.

Josh Howell, LEI President, and Mark Reich, LEI Chief Engineer Strategy, join Olivier Larue, President of Ydatum, and discuss the Toyota Production System (TPS), the three elements embedded within TPS that make it more than just a production system, and the ability of TPS to foster problem-solving and creativity. Olivier worked with Mark at the Toyota Supplier Support Center (TSSC) in the late 1990s and has led Ydatum since 2000, assisting companies in implementing its version of TPS. Olivier recently authored the first of three volumes of The Toyota Economic System, which will present the three elements of the “Toyota triangle” — philosophical, technical, and managerial — and their necessity in making TPS an economic system for growth. TPS has enabled mass production to accommodate customization, which had been minimized in the pursuit of lower costs for large quantities of standardized goods, says Olivier. TPS allows companies to “build a product affordably and very much customized to the desires of the customer, one without compromising the other.” Yet when attempting to apply TPS it remains difficult for many organizations to simultaneously achieve the primary goals of TPS — highest quality, lowest cost, and shortest lead time. Josh and Mark explore with Olivier the importance of the Toyota triangle in achieving TPS goals, especially longer-term goals, and examine the relationship of the triangle to the better known TPS “house” (the roof of three goals, supported by jidoka and just-in-time columns, etc.). The house embodies philosophical, technical, and managerial elements throughout, notes Olivier, but they are not specifically called out in the house. Human development, also not shown in the house, is at the center of the Toyota triangle. Olivier says human development is critical because despite advances in artificial intelligence, currently only people can solve complex problems, human problems. “TPS at the end of the day is trying to solve a human problem using people through the human creativity and the human intelligence.” Olivier also discusses the organizational problems he encounters with problem-solving. For example, he often sees people gravitating toward problems they know how to solve instead of solving the right problem. This occurs because it’s not always safe to solve the right problem and individuals don’t have the courage to take them on. “It’s very important for companies to realize that if they don’t provide an environment where it’s safe to solve problems, two things are going to happen: problems are not going to get solved, or if some problem gets solved it will be the wrong one... As management and leaders, you have to be able to encourage the people to solve difficult problems without fear of having negative consequences if they fail.” Learn more about TPS and lean leadership at lean.org