[wil421]

>Principle 5 Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time. Quality takes precedence (Jidoka). Any employee in the Toyota Production System has the authority to stop the process to signal a quality issue.

I heard culturally Japan and to an extent other Asian manufacturing nations would never actually press the button. Can anyone confirm this?

[la_barba]

>I heard culturally Japan and to an extent other Asian manufacturing nations would never actually press the button. Can anyone confirm this?

Its a cord, not a button, and the cord gets pulled all the time. It is a bit brave of Toyota to admit this fact when today's "journalists" are always looking for an angle to take a quote out of context and clickbait the headline. "Toyota admits they have constant flaws in their manufacturing process"

https://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/toyota-quality-c...

https://www.leanblog.org/2012/11/andon-cords-at-the-toyota-t...

"In our introductory discussions about Japanese culture, Brad talked about the importance of harmony (“Big Harmony”) in Japanese culture. Because of the overwhelming need for harmony, people often wouldn't naturally speak up. They might be more willing to cover up a problem than to really fix it. So, the andon cord is a mechanism that makes it easier for people to speak up."

[mnctvanj]

If you can get your hands on the HBS case study of TPS it's a great read. Details how much emphasis is put on blaming any/all issues on process, rather than people. To the extent that if a clumsy worker drops a wrench, it is assumed to be a problem with process, not that worker, and addressed immediately. The case study also describes a couple of examples of assembly line workers pulling the stop levers and how management runs over asap (every minute of stoppage is much money lost) to ask the question "why" five times in order to understand the root issue of the process breakdown.

[bityard]

> The case study also describes a couple of examples of assembly line workers pulling the stop levers and how management runs over asap (every minute of stoppage is much money lost) to ask the question "why" five times in order to understand the root issue of the process breakdown.

More than that, when the manager approaches the employee who stopped the line, she is not supposed to ask, "why did you stop the line?" She instead asks, "how can I help?"

[vram22]

>and how management runs over asap (every minute of stoppage is much money lost) to ask the question "why" five times in order to understand the root issue of the process breakdown.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys

[dillonmckay]

Is this it?

https://hbr.org/1999/09/decoding-the-dna-of-the-toyota-produ...

[iooi]

Previous discussion, 5 Whys: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11656575

[elemeno]

Do you have a title or a link to the case study - just searching for TPS on HBR returns an awful lot of results!

[Kluny]

It's something that can be overcome with role-play training and consistent reinforcement. Examples are actually given in the book. One case study is a Korean airline that had a horrifying safety record in part because copilots and other staff didn't feel empowered to overrule the captain even if the captain was wrong. It was a cultural problem, but was overcome through training.

[dugditches]

Not necessarily true.

It's a an employee's duty to bring any abnormality to their superior, and then let them make a decision.

Sometimes something anomalous to a newer employee is actually normal, and an experienced superior knows about.

But sometimes letting an anomaly by doesn't get caught to later, since people further down the line/process aren't looking for or see them. And it's not until the product/process reaches final testing that they become aware. Thus it being cheaper to have stopped the line sooner. And 'punishment' being more severe than simply reporting a mistake or anomaly in the first place.