Six Sigma at Toyota?

Hello Paresh:
Application of Six Sigma or DMAIC is not required to be a successful company.  Toyota has already mastered its production and design systems, optimized the business model, and use many of the tools identified in Six Sigma methodology.
If you can build a perfect quality product profitably (i.e. customer is happy), there is no need for Six Sigma. 
In any case, Toyota has enquired and have assigned some people to look into  Six Sigma methodology.  I believe they have appointed a VP of Six Sigma last year.
Regards,
Praveen

As they say in their website, the Toyota system has two pillars: Respect for the people and Continous improvement.
Some of the tools they use: 5S, Kaizen, SMED, just-in-time, lean.
A Toyota employee (who has been working there for 7 years) told me recently that “a job in Toyota is a life-time job”. I had heard stories about this before, but not directly from a person who works there and thinks that. “They won’t fire you (unless you did something bad intentionally) because they belive it is allways a system failure, and not a person failure. The employee is not guilty if we don’t know how to motivate him, how to train him, if we don’t give him the right tools or the right enviroment, or the needed support, or even if we failed in our recruiting system”.
He also told me that, as everything in Toyota, the carreer growth is slow but continous and steady. One must note that Toyota get where they got mor due to a long evolution that took many decades than due to breakthrough.
Also this week I’ve been talking with a Toyota supplier. He told me that Toyota works with the suppliers in a very different way from what the western car manufacturers do. For example, they don’t requier the supplier to have a certified QMS, and they do work very close with the supllier during the development stage and when there are problems (not the ususal “submit the PPAP” and “fill the 8D in the following 5 days”).
Many organizations say that their success is the success of the employees, the shareholders, the suppliers, the customers, and the community in general. Maybe in Toyota they not only say that, but they also think that.

In addition, Toyota isn’t ISO certified.  They don’t need it…and I couldn’t argue with them on that.
EdG

Gabriel:
Toyota may not require the standard QMS system as we know.  However, they have their own quite extensive quality system documentation that they use in working with their suppliers.  It is more thorough that a typical quality system I see at many companies. 
Regards,
praveen

ISO9000 is one of the most stupid thing people shall avoid it. ISO was copying PDCA model from Six Sigma in their latest 2000 version. How many ISO-certified companies got the knowledge and commitment to practise PDCA continual improvement?

Steven Spear and H. Kent Brown identify four simple rules that are the foundation of the Toyota Production System. “These rules guide the design, operation, and improvement of every activity, connection, and pathway for every product and service. The rules are as follows:
 
 
Rule 1: All work shall be highly specified as to content, sequence, timing, and outcome.
 
Rule 2: Every customer-supplier connection must be direct, and there must be an unambiguous yes-or-no way to send requests and receive responses.
 
Rule 3: The pathway for every product and service must be simple and direct.
 
Rule 4: Any improvement must be made in accordance with the scientific method, under the guidance of a teacher, at the lowest possible level in the organization.
 
As the rules require that activities, connections, and flow paths have built-in tests to signal problems automatically. It is the continual response to problems that makes this seemingly rigid system so flexible and adaptable to changing circumstances.”
 

From what I understand, there are some Toyota plants that are using Six Sigma.  Contact Pascal (http://www.leansystems.org) — he may be able to give you more information/specifics — Pascal is a former Toyota manager.
Further, while in this forum, the Toyota Production System (or Lean) is viewed as a set of methods to make processes faster, it really is a very disciplined problem solving process.  I saw a previous post on Steven Spears 1999 HBR article which does a decent job in describing this.  His most recent article in HBR (Learing to Lead at Toyota) gives a look of the type of problem solving that takes place — available for download at http://www.hbsp.com. 
I believe that they solve many of their problems with their practical problem solving approach — but at some plants, for problems involving more x-factors, they rely on ‘six sigma’ approaches as well.
Good luck!

I am not Six sigma expert, but in my point of view they have a little bit different philosofy. They do the right thing on the right first time. Use the preventive thinking etc. With reference to the biger and biger volume I am absolutely agree. But what of it? Maybe it will be a star of the bigest competition concerning the improvment and new levels of TQM as a whole. They have unknown and unfamiliar motivation to be the best. Any comments about this issue?

Of what I have been reading of late, they are seriously into Lean.

Amen

CN12,
Toyota (and the Japanese) are seriously working with statistical tools since the post-WWII era, starting with Deming’s lectures in 1950, followed by Juran shortly after.
The lectures included SPC, variation, need to improve, understand customer’s needs, involvment of top management and production floor, foolproofing – all this package included concept and immediate use.
Does it look familiar with SS? Probably one of the reasons so few (if any) Japanese companies are adopting Six Sigma.
Fight Variation! Kessler

Ed,
With all due respect, your suggestion that Toyota is using Six Sigma shows ignorance of TPS. There is no way they are doing anything called Six Sigma – it is not how they do business.

Dear Mr. Dog,
Why do you want to make this a racial/ethnic issue?
Taguchi’s works have been translated extensively into English and many other languages. I read Taguchi’s Quality Engineering as early as 1984 and worked through each of his data sets to make sure I understood what he was talking about (translation was a little rough). I have read Shingo and Ohno and made sure others did as well.
There have also been thousands of Westerners that have invested the time to learn Japanese and go live in Japan. Graduate schools such as Thunderbird have had focuses on Japan since at least the 70’s.
That said, do I think most practioners of Six Sigma understand TPS? No. But the same is true for most practioners of Lean. The problem, I believe, is all societies are into instant gratification and everyone thinks they know more than anyone more than 10 years older than them. Look at the bulk of the Six Sigma consultants – less than 35 with less than 10 years experience in process execution.
I personally think you know a lot that would help folks on here. There are glimses of genius in many of your posts. Please drop the us vs. them thing. It adds no value.

Andy,
I would like to learn about S/N and, in particular, the issues you cite.  Please recommend references.

I thought Taguchi did publish a revised S/N method. I am not yet find out what is the new method. 

 Folks:
The paper is mentioned several times, but the title was not given (perhaps I missed it), so here it is:  Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System by Steven Spear and H. Kent Bowen, Harvard Business Review, Sept-October 1999.  This is an important paper in understanding the reasons behind Toyota’s success.
I’ve been researching Toyota’s quality and financial performance in conjunction with a Lean project that I’m working on.  Here’s how Toyota is doing:
According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2003 there were 529 automobile recalls reported to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. [Stephen Power and Karen Lundegard.  Wall Street Journal. New York, N.Y.: March 4, 2004. pg D.1] 
In all, about 8% of the country’s registered vehicles — some 19.5 million vehicles in all — were recalled last year [2003]. That amounts to roughly one in every 12 vehicles on the road and is about three percentage points higher than a decade earlier.  Whatever the explanation for the rise in recalls, it suggests that quality improvements still have a way to go, particularly at Detroit’s Big Three [italics added]. The domestic automakers, who have fought perceptions of poor quality for decades, have been responsible for a disproportionate share of the vehicles recalled.  (p. D.1) 
So, how did Toyota do with respect to the Big Three automakers?  According to the WSJ article, GM recalled about 7.3 million vehicles in 2003, which amounted to about nearly 38 percent of all vehicles recalled in 2003, even though GM had just 28 percent of the market.  “Ford Motor Co.’s share of all recalled vehicles has exceeded its market share in seven of the past 10 years. The same is true for DaimlerChrysler AG for four of the past five years.” (p. D.1).  In comparison, “Toyota Motor Corp.’s share of all recalled vehicles never exceeded its market share in the past decade.” (p. D.1).    
For the past seven years, the Toyota Camry has been the best-selling car in the U.S.  In the past 20 years, Toyota has sold 6 million Camrys.  Of those, 5 million of them are still operating, speaking to the reliability and quality of the automobile.  In terms of business success, Toyota earned operating profits of approximately $12 billion in 2002.  This amount was greater than all of the Big Three automaker’s profits combined during the years 1998 through 2002.  By 2003, Toyota had accumulated $34 billion in cash and $100 billion in assets. (Maynard, 2003).  USA Today reports “Toyota’s market capitalization is already larger than GM’s, Ford’s and DaimlerChrysler’s combined.” (Kiley, 2004).
By the end of this decade, Toyota intends to become the market share leader in the global motor vehicle industry.  By 2010, Toyota will surpass the Big Three automakers in market share of cars sold in the United States.  In 1984, Toyota had only a little over 5 percent of the U.S. motor vehicle market share.  By comparison, the Big Three U.S. automakers: GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler had 41 percent, 22 percent and 11 percent respectively.  But by 2001, U. S. share of the market had shifted significantly.  Toyota’s market share grew steadily to about 11 percent, while GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler shares were 28 percent, 21 percent and 14 percent respectively. (Womack and Jones, 2003).

“Toyota marches from victory to victory.” Discussing Consumer Reports 2004 annual automotive edition, news agency Reuters reports that Toyota had the most vehicles with “recommended” ratings with 21 of 22 vehicles tested winning the honors, and the hybrid Toyota Prius, powered by electric batteries and a gas engine, tied with Toyota’s Lexus LS430 luxury sedan as the most satisfying vehicle.  Also, Reuters reports that of the 32 most reliable vehicles, 31 were from Japanese manufacturers, Consumer Reports said.
 ([(Consumer Reports: U.S. cars beat Europeans, still trail Asians in reliability) March 09, 2004 – http://www.autonews.com/news.cms?newsId=8057%5D from Consumer Reports – March 9, 2004)
According to Automotive News Europe, 2003 marked the year that Toyota surpassed Ford Motor Company as the number two global automaker. [Title: Toyota passes Ford as global No. 2, Published 11/17/2003 in Automotive News Europe.], “TOYOTA Motor Corp. squeezed past FORD Motor Co. by 43,000 vehicles in the first six months of its fiscal year to become the world’s second-biggest automaker.  Toyota has been closing in on Ford and GM since the early 1990s thanks to rising sales in North America, Europe and Southeast Asia.” By James R. Crate Automotive News Europe / November 17, 2003. [http://europe.autonews.com/article.cms?articleId=53502&a=a&bt=Toyota+passes+Ford

wood95ATcox.net
Thanks!

Why “Tweaking”the concept.For Toyota it is “TQM”+KAIZEN (5S)+ “TPM”+”JIT”=TPS,so you can modify it to become :
TQM+Lean+JIT+SS+TPM+KAIZEN (5S)=TPS.  kind regards

Very Informative Insight Details.But how to ensure that others famous “cars”companies are not doing the same?how to recognize true honest efforts from “Adverticement”?   thank you,regards 

oh oh oh wait a minute! About 30 postings and 15 participants in this post. How many of you have read the book Against All Odds: The Story of the Toyota Motor Corporation and the Family That Created It by Yukiyasu Togo, William Wartman. Please get a copy and read it before further posting. This book is out of print. If you don’t get at least read The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles From The World’s Greatest Manufacturer by Jeffrey K. Liker.
 
Thanks.
Srinivas Ranga VN

Mike,
Yes, I have that book and read it many times. The first book I mentioned gives the Philosophy behind the TPS (which was published 20 yrs ago) and the later gives a westernized concept of the TPS. All the three (3rd one being Monden book) are excellent book. The reason I mentioned about these books are people try to COPY the TPS system without understanding the PHILOSOPHY behind it.

Dear Expert with Noname,
I have no time & there is not enough space in this forum to explain. So please read the books.

If someone at Georgetown told you that, they were pulling your leg. It isn’t true.

IMNO, you do not need to read three books and writing a long article just to understand and explain the philosophy of TPS. First, Japan is resources scarce country and second, Japanese language structure makes writing a complex idea like Ford production system a difficult task.
Waste of resources is almost an evil in Japanese society. Onno also found it’ impractical to use Japanese language to introduce American car production system concept to Japanese workers. He had no better choice except to come out a simplified version of production system like kanban. Waste elimination is just an intrinsic part of Japanese culture and this concept was naturally adopted in TPS.

There is a similar concept for SS in Japan. The name is Kaikaku.

Kirk:
I’ve not seen any data published by Toyota that indicates a sigma level for any of their processes.  If it’s out there, I would be interested in learning about it.
Four years ago our organization (5,000 + employees) rolled out Six Sigma.  From this limited experience, the fundamental difference to achieving quality improvement beween the TPS and our Six Sigma implementation is workforce participation:
Ours: none;

Paresh,
To answer your post, they are using the predecessor to SS:  Plan, Do, Check, Adjust.  Its logic closely resembles DMAIC, although, I think DMAIC’s logic is better, IMHO;  but I haven’t worked at Toyo 10 years, which may change my answer.  Their problem solving ability is light years ahead of most companies professing to be doing SS.
They are light years ahead because TPS is not a bag of tools, and it’s not a system (even though it’s part of the name), it’s a thinking process.  Teaching this thinking process to all employees is the responsibility of management at Toyota.  SS’s only saving grace is that *good* MBB’s can teach this thinking proces to BB’s in less than 10 years.
Finally, why don’t they call what they are doing Six Sigma even though it is?  My opinion is found in Dr. Deming’s 10th point:  eliminate slogans.  My two cents, anyway.
Regards,
Chris

Why every-body speaks about  Toyota’s TPS?What about all the others cars companies,such as :Honda,Nissan,Mitsubishi,Ford….etc?
Just curious to know,thanks for any informative feedback,regards.

Two clarifications — I understand that some of their plants use Six Sigma, and referred to as Six Sigma — I don’t have the plant locations but will try to get them for you.  They use it to supplement their problem solving methods (described in Spear’s articles).
— also, don’t know if your reference to ‘TPS being lean’ was an interpretation of my posting, but it wasn’t written that way  — most people know TPS as lean, thus my reference to lean in parenthesis– unfortunately, ‘lean’ is a poor interpretation of the Toyota Production System.
Regards.

Toyota is rated, as the best managed company in the world. Although it can lay claim to be the benchmark in several fields, it is so dominant in the field of cycle time that it has spawned a new language of speed—Kanban, pull systems; stockless production, zero inventories, just-in-time (JIT) and lean manufacturing. Although it was old Henry Ford who started the cycle time revolution by converting iron ore into finished cars in forty-eight hours. Ford hasn’t been able to replicate the recipe since!

well i don’t know wheather six sigma should learn from Toyota or not but certainly i would like to comment that six-sigma is just a tool which will help you in achieving success ,it can’t spoonfeed you ‘success’,it can only act as a spoon and the conent in the spoon is for you to choose -either success like Toyota or __________,the choice is entirely yours!

For the Toyota production system – TPS:
http://www.toyotaproductionsystem.net/
TPS uses Ikko Nagashi
Ikko Nagashi – One Flow or Single-Flow, or SF
Lean is short for Lean Enterprise – an academic’s interpretation of TPS
 

Toyota is using their own Quality tool box and TPS.

If Toyota is ignoring SS ,using instead the famous TPS (Lean),why then to say “SS at Toyota”?It is due to start asking about the SS initiative in Motorola?or in GE, Is it still functioning with momentum and enthusiasm?regards

different as chalk and cheese …
Apparently over there in Merrie Auld England you don’t get American cheese.
–McD
 

By now we have about 40 posts from about 20 different posters. And nothing like “Yes, here in Toyota we…” or “No, here in Toyota we don’t…”?
That brings to my mind many posts in other thread that were like “I am in BOFA and I can tell you…”, “We are implementing Six Sigma at Ford and…”, “When I was in GE we…”, or even “When I invented Six Sigma at Motorola…” stuff. But never some personal experience from inside Toyota.
It seems to me that people in Toyota are not interested in Six Sigma forums to start with. So what is left for Six Sigma itself?

Just in few words:what  do you mean by LEAN?How to correlate between SS and Lean ,and between it  and the TPS?I’m really confused,thanks and regards.

Toyot Way isn´t the same as TPS; the two are the best weapons to manufacturing cars in only one line, without any waste. Toyota will surpass GM by the 3rd. quarter of the 2005 and it´ll be the first automobile industry in the word.
All approaches to lean in America and over the warld missed the JIDOKA (automation with human touch and BUILT-IN QUALITY) and GENCHI GENBUTSU (Go see for yourself to thorogly understand the situation).
You don´t need SS when the worker are in the system adn the manager are over the sytem to help the workers to built-in quality.
I suggest to read the book The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer by Jeffrey K. Liker ISBN:0071392319
McGraw-Hill; 2004. Dr. Deming´s philosophy is rigth there for ever.

i was reading your board…thank you….found it very interesting, and realized you all worry too much there’s a much bigger picture than toyota’s lean production.  i live and breathe toyota, g’town everyday…lean production=injured workers.
 
thanks

lean production = injured workers..everyday at toyota. what else can i say.

For your information: 5S, SMED, JUST IN TIME is nothing new, that the MTM philosophy has inside since 60 years ago.
MTM is 5S concept and more, much more time before Toyota use it.
SMED is the same thing that organize internal and external task in a or some human-machine units. Nothing new.
Just in Time?, could you imagine an assembly operation if you have not the part at the moment you need?
On the other hand, How are the times calculated? How are the methods designed and optimized?, by direct observation?, recording in video?. Some Lean Manufacturing literature is plenty of errors, and unknowledge about scientific methods design and time calculation.
Do the Lean Manufacturing authors know something about human performance?
Let’s thing about it.
 
 
 

Carlos,
I take it you don’t drive a Toyota!!!!

Hi There,
I am sorry to join the discussion late,
The Six Sigma & Toyota Way differs in two ways;
Six Sigma is totally a scientific  way in approching your business.
Toyota Way is more organic & involves four elements of;
1. Philosphy – Long Term, Customer First
2. Process – Good Process will yield good result. (JIT,Jidoka,Andon,Heijunka etc.)
3. People & Partners –  Employee Involvement,nemawashi ( group consensus)
4. Problem Solving – Genchi Gembutsu.
As per Jeff Liker & my own observations on my friends working with Motorola I can say that Scope of Six Sigma can cover  points 1,2 & 4.( Liker says SixSigma covers only 1 & 2, but i beg to differ from him)
The people & partners area  is one that can be solely handled by scientific processes. You need to tune your culture in an organic way.
In a summary People & partners ( Long Term Relationships,Mutual Trust) are the main difference between Toyota Way & Six Sigma.
Thanks & regards,
Senthil
 

Thomas,
I was looking over the “Six Sigma at Toyota” thread, and happened upon your post.  I checked some of your facts, and was amazed to find nobody responded to your posting. 
While I could say the lack of response was surprising to me, it really wasn’t.  I think you pretty much summed it up with respect to Toyota quality.  My understanding is that Toyota is not using Six Sigma as prescribed in the states.  They have their own way of handling automotive quality.  It appears their way works by your data.  Americans need a special name, and all the frills around it to do quality right.  The Japanese just do quality while they work. 
Thanks for your efforts, and your information.  I for one found it very enlightening.
Ken

Hi Senthil,
I think you have distinguished the main difference between Womack and Jones’ “Lean” and that of the Toyota Production System. Lean, as Womack and Jones present it, is more about a quantitative approach to removing wastes in the process. TPS takes a more triangulated approach using both qualitative and quantitative strategies in what you say as “tuning your culture in an organic way”. I say people are not robots so don’t treat them as robots.
In my Lean research I have found quite a bit of criticism of the seminal work carried out by Womack and Jones published in “The Machine That Changed The World”. What make it hard for me is the political issue that my PhD supervisor is one of the contributing researchers to this work;¬) Any tips?
Paul
 
 

In reference to : “lean production = injured workers..everyday at toyota. what else can i say.”
That is a big load of dog feces.  Lean doesn’t mean working faster, it means working smarter.  A quote from the father of TPS:
“The slower but consistent tortoise causes less waste and is much more desirable than the speedy hare that races ahead and then stops occasionally to doze.  The Toyota Production System can be realized only when all the workers become tortoises.” (Ohno, 1988)
TPS (Toyota Production Systems) and Kaizen is a corporate culture and not just some tools to make better products.  It starts with the lowest person on the seniority chain and goes up to the president. 
Speed and “One piece flow” are completely unrelated.  I worked at a toyota PDC and in my time there was one minor injury, and it was from someone who was walking to the break room.

They are using an innovative approach called “common sense”.  Their entire organization is run by engineers.