Toyota set up a long-term strategy in 2007: Toyota Global Vision 2020. The very generic “Toyota Way” outlines the two most important values: “Respect for People” and “Continuous Improvement”. The current rough economic situation shows that this is not only a “happy day paper” but it has really been embraced in the regions. One example outlined in this post from the Evolving Excellence blog is the reaction of the North American plant managers to the industry’s downturn in Q3 2008: they trained the people instead of sending them home. However, the unprecedented crisis seems to make job cuts unavoidable – the first time since the 50ies. Therefore, titles like “Will This Economy Finally Push the Toyota Way Into Software Development” become ambiguous. Anyway, it’s far too shortsighted to put agile software development on a level with “the Toyota Way”. So, let’s have a look at KM at Toyota in one of the next posts.
January, 2009
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Exploring the Toyota Way
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009Sustainability Why Not?
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker for the first time in 2008, offers a new collaborative website on “sustainability” innovation. The site combines appealing visualization, marketing for its own innovations, and last but not least a contest to elicit even more ideas for safety, water, land, air, community, and energy topics. Well done, however, the site is just collecting the ideas with only limited interaction opportunities. It goes along with the current US marketing campaign. A background on the campaign is given e.g. in this blog post.
Thanks to Jens Hoffmann for pointing me to the “Lean Thinking” group at Xing where I came across the link in a recent post.
What can knowledge managers learn from lean management?
Sunday, January 18th, 2009SAP is going to introduce lean management methods and tools this year (see news in the German business magazine Manager Magazin).
So, what may I as a knowledge manager learn from companies that have applied lean management for years, e.g. Toyota? The good thing is that I came across one brief and very good introduction on strategy deployment on the SAP website. Pascal Dennis from the Lean Enterprise Institute introduces this lean management tool in a webcast with examples from Toyota.
Based on this introduction I see the following learnings from a knowledge management point of view:
1. Plan
Tell a short concise story on what you plan to do and visualize the strategy
Avoid “power point chunks” to convey your message
Go see for yourself, i.e. talk to the people in the processes
2. Do
We can’t tell people how to do. Involve them in each improvement step.
Better arrange “catch ball meetings” than “happy talk meetings”
Create simple standards and visualize them. Less is more.
Don’t ship “junks”, i.e. don’t accept poor quality contributions
3. Check
Make problems visible. “Problems are gold”.
4. Adjust
Everybody solves problem. Enable a simple, shared problem solving approach.
Create opportunities for reflection and learning points
Develop the “Book of knowledge” (i.e. best practices and lessons learned)
In one of the next posts I’ll take a closer look at KM at Toyota.
Expectations for 2009
Sunday, January 11th, 2009
Black Swan at a pond near Wädenswil (Switzerland)
What may you expect from this blog positioned somewhere in the “long tail”? I appreciate blogging as a channel to accompany my continuous learning. Therefore, I would like to find some answers to questions like:
- Which are good ways to combine collaborative innovation and knowledge management?
- What may knowledge management contribute to lean management execution?
- Which change management methods are most useful for knowledge management?
- How to position knowledge management in a rough economic environment?
- Where has knowledge management been applied for sustainable development?
- Who has developed which new methods to improve the handling of complex systems?
- How far is the unknown manageable?
Happy New Year
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
View from La Sombaille in direction of Le Chasseral (January 1st 2009)
I wish you – the casual reader of this blog – a joyful and shiny new year full of verve. I spent quiet days with my wife, children, family, and friends in Germany and Switzerland. I particularly appreciated the 3-day-trip to La Chaux-de-Fonds: the town of my childhood.
