Dave's random mumblings…

I’ve put down my thoughts about how experimentation is one of the central tenants that separate TPS from it’s imitators. This Plan-Do-Check-Act structured approach requires well thought out specifications and a high degree of structure.

Conventionally this structured approach with a reliance on clear concise documentation would indicate a very ridged command/control approach with little flexibility given to the various organizations. At Toyota the opposite is true, organizations are challenged and left to get on with it with little management oversight while the project is unfolding.

To translate this to a production system is straightforward. There may be a number of good ways of doing something, experimentation will find the best. Once this best way is found, it will always be used unless something drives a change.

The operator putting wheel nuts on will put them on in a certain order, over a certain time, using specified tool.

The work is highly specified. The content, timing, sequence and expected outcome are clearly known to the operator, who happens to be responsible for his own quality. In this case the outcome is four wheels installed with twenty wheel nuts to a set torque value.

It sounds really simple, the difference is in the details. In a vast majority of production shops the sequencing of a job is not documented to this level of detail. Typically new operators are shown by experienced employees how they do a particular operation (like fitting the wheels). There is no clear, unambiguous specification to follow. No experimentation has been done to refine the best way and variability still exists, and where you have variability you allow room for errors to happen.

Toyota clearly does things differently. First a new employee is taught the right way to do the job they have been assigned by their immediate supervisor, not the person doing it last. No bad habits are handed down, only the correct sequence. The next part is possibly the biggest difference, each employee is required to be able to answer the following for each of the jobs they are required to do.

• How do you do this work? (Plan)
• How do you know you are doing this work correctly? (Do)
• How do you tell the output is free of defects? (Check)
• What happens if there is a defect? (Act)

This continual questioning of the process and how the operator is doing it brings us back in a full circle to the “Plan-Do-Check-Act” mantra that runs deep through the development cycle. We can see is also at the center of the production processes.

This is also where the moving line becomes so important, at any time anyone familiar with the system can look at the location of the car being put together and know exactly what state of build it should be in. It works just as well for 737 jet liners as it does for a Toyota Yaris.

If the car/jet has hit a certain location in the factory then the seats should be in the process of being installed. If the seats are still sitting on the side of the line waiting for another process to be completed then we have a problem and the line is stopped. The line is not restarted untill the issue is resolved. In the case of the 737 manufacturing, design and industrial engineers are collocated with in yards of the line and their sole job is to solve the issue and restart production.

In contrast to Toyotas and their often vague, but challenging goals NASA uses a very different requirement process.

They break the goal setting into four distinct actions before authorizing a project.

Need – every requirement for a program or project should be fully understood and how this requirement is needed to fulfil he project goal. The idea is clearly to stop unnecessary items (or work statement padding) before it starts. NASA feels each initial requirement should be examined as closely as any change coming through a robust change management process.

Attainable – If the project goal is unattainable with the assigned project resources then the project is a waste of time and effort. There may a need for feasibility studies, technology demonstrators to prove concepts or firm up what started as an educated guess. These risk reduction activities need to be part of the project plan and the results of which may drive gate decisions.

Verifiable – Each requirement needs to be examined closely and clear criteria included in how it will be verified. There should be clear pass/no pass criteria that are not subjective and therefore unverifiable.

Accountability – This is seen as important for each individual requirement and ownership of each requirement should appear on the charter or requirements document. NASA feels the owner should be a person with a stake in, be knowledgeable about, and understand how success will be measured for each requirement. The owner needs to be involved in all change managmenent activity that affect their requirements.

NASA, like the rest of aerospace, works extensively with specifications as a risk reduction strategy. A specification control document identifies the final functionality, environmental quality, foot print, interface and so on of the final product. Be it a complete launch vehicle or a small component of that launch vehicle.

The accuracy of a specification is every bit as import as any other requirement document.

This contrasts with Toyotas approach where goals are purposely left rather vague to encourage organizations to explore options and encourage groups to collaborate with others (both internally and externally) to find the best solution.

In a far more risk adverse industry the goals are very clearly stated and the way in which they will be met is left open a little more.

It’s an interesting contrast in style.

In manufacturing the Toyota Production System (TPS) is the benchmark that all others measure against. Many companies, engineers and academics have spend a lot of time examining how Toyota does what it does, and I’m no different.

There is a lot to be admired in Toyota and how they do things.  I spent a little time examining how Toyota moves forward and a very large part of the success of their product line may be the setting of tough goals. Just setting the goal and expending the necessary resources to make it happen is a small part of it, it’s allowing the people to own and take responsibility that makes their approach a little different.

Setting challenging or nearly unobtainable targets like “a full product line in every country” forces the company to look for new ways of doing things and break away from established routines.

The goals are purposely left rather vague, this allows organizations to explore different strategies. It can force groups to move outside their usual functional group and collaborate with others (both internally and externally) to find the beat solution as no “right solution” exists.

This teamwork has been always central to the TPS, on the functional level each member of the team is responsible for the sucsess of the team. Teams and the TPS see these obstacles not as problems, but as opportunities to be overcome and make the team and product better. Never settling for today and continually looking for incremental improvements to go along side the leaps in technology allows Toyota to make these big goals.

Toyota believes a car can contribute to a fulfilling a need , and by association making people happy. By wanting a full product line in every country Toyota links customer fulfillment directly to its employee’s endeavors.

Toyota says they don’t make cars, they enhance people’s lives. From my dealings with people from Toyota, employees really believe this to be true. It’s buried deep in the company DNA and is why they strive to be better tomorrow.

Other companies look at the TPS, transfer some methodology, empower people to own the process, but miss the part about making the customer happy being the most important part.

The out sourcing model has been comprehensively explored over the last few decades. It started with clothing and low margin consumer items, and with the 787 program it’s been taken to it’s logical conclusion. Where not only the build of major sub sections has been sent to other companies, but the design, the development and most importantly the risk was also shared.

The 787 has had some very public supply chain and partner issues, however (and I admit I’m probably too close to it to be impartial) it’s a fundamentally good product that has over 800 airplanes sold and very few cancelations. If it was not a game changer the customers would not have stayed.

Looking at other companies working in aero we see some using a very different strategy. That of designing and building parts in house.

An article about SpaceX made interesting reading, I was aware of the company from industry publications and a friend works for Surrey Satellite Technology which is partially owned by them.

SpaceX was started in 2002 when Elon Musk was looking for his next venture with $1.5 billion from the sale of Paypal to Ebay burning a hole in his pocket. He founded what’s now SpaceX, a small company that recently won a contract to supply the International Space Station with it’s Falcon rocket.

It took just 6 years to go from start-up to flying hardware into low earth orbit. In risk adverse aero terms this is fast, in the bureaucratic, government dominated space business it’s unheard of. This is what private companies do so well, they make the exotic affordable. I know it’s relative, but $8M for a SpaceX launch verses maybe $15M per launch for existing launchers will go a long way to making low earth orbit more accessible.

Building rockets is not easy and doing it from a clean sheet of paper with lots of knowledge, but no hardware is even harder.

SpaceX set out to make cut the price of access and did it in a number of ways.

• Eliminated the massive overhead found in “legacy” aero
• Employed engineers not afraid to get their hands dirty developing hardware
• Put emphasis on the product and not the process
• Own the engineering and production

Each one of these is the opposite of mainstream space that has lived on government contracts and cost-plus contracts. There was nothing new about this, a number of successful small aero companies use the same philosophy, what’s different is how this was leveraged throughout the value stream in the final product.

SpaceX designed and built their own liquid-fuel rocket engines, the first ever that was not built under government contract, and the first new liquid fuel engine in the US for 40 years.

All the rocket parts are designed by SpaceX and almost all are built in-house. This allows them to quickly rectify problems and rework assemblies to incorporate changes. Add engineers that understand the hardware and the build process, and production becomes very agile.

It took two months to identify a launch failure problem, design the change, build the parts and have the modified launcher on the pads ready for launch. This is incredibly fast and was achieved because of product knowledge.

Owning the entire value stream, from concept to tested hardware out the door is a huge advantage when it comes to fixing problems. No endless rounds of meetings, politics, testing and waiting months for engineering before build can be revised.

Over the last couple of years SpaceX has won a NASA contract to deliver 20 tons of cargo to ISS and demonstrate the potential to deliver crew members. For companies that see a future in delivering hardware, Space-X and the Falcon Launcher shows there is another way to build hardware.