I’m all for approaching things in creative ways. When I was a school kid and couldn’t reach my light switch from bed at night, I strung together some rope and a pair of scissors to create my own remote control. When my work schedule wouldn’t allow me to get to the gym in the evenings, I woke up earlier and improvised with heavy items in my apartment. Be resourceful, come at things a new way. I like it.
While I don’t want to turn Lean Matters into a paean to Toyota’s lean prowess, there are occasions when I’m reminded of just how far ahead the automaker is in stripping waste from its production facilities.
A recent article in the San Antonio Express News, which you can read here, offers a glimpse inside the kaizen efforts of five employees at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Texas (TMMT), the nearly 2,000-employee facility in San Antonio that produces the company’s Tundra pickup truck (which itself isn’t too keen on reducing waste, eating up lots of gas with its 18 or so miles per gallon).
Who knows where the economy will point in the next 12 months. One day’s recession cries are drowned out by the next day’s market surge. Regardless, it would behoove manufacturers to prepare for a fallout. And one good way to do that is to adopt lean inventories, a practice that frees up precious funds for growth initiatives and helps stave off short-term borrowing by reducing spending on materials, storage, and contract manufacturing, among other budget items.
Popular business disciplines and technologies inevitably attract attention from vendors outside the fold, like scavenger fish that graze on the microorganisms on a shark’s body. Lean manufacturing is much the same. Companies know that if they identify with the discipline, they stand to capture a fair share of attention, whether it’s deserved or not.
Idle Factories: The Anti-Lean
Key to any lean effort is the staff of workers at its epicenter. We’re still a few sci-fi generations away from the manufacturing plant that relies wholly on automation; for now, no workers = no product.
Executives at American Axle and GM don’t need a reminder of that these days. That supplier-OEM relationship quickly turned toxic in recent weeks as a strike by more than 3,000 American Axle workers dragged production to a halt. When they were working, those employees turned out driveline systems and powertrain components for automakers. Now, with safety stocks long since dried up, the supplier has passed the contagion of idle hands to its customers.