Man - Concentration

“Human work is most important.”

This is the core philosophy of TPS. Human work is very complicated and has many aspects. If so, what is the most important "Point" of human work? I think this is the concentration of people.

Once critical points that relate to concentrations are determined, we connect these points.

My coach used to say “don’t ask the people to memorize the work. Let the materials & layout memorize the work. Let the people focus on quality & Kaizen.”

Then we move on to the Area or the standardized work.

These three points must be present inside each area otherwise the work might be efficient but not effective. Since these are points, it should not take too much time.

Once standardized work is made, we start to see the solid or the organizational issues. Once I had an opportunity to visit a non-Toyota plant. They were presenting many topics but one of them was "Human error”. Great topic but the solutions were all implementing computers. Then I saw the assembly line and huge turbulence was happening. I asked the team what was happening. The answer was that the human resource is distributing checks (or the detail of it). How can they ignore what HR was doing and present solutions for human error? HR had many reasons why they had to distribute the paper at that time, but nothing justified that action. The organization just did not respect the concentration of its people. One of the first things I learned from my coach was how to observe the shop floor without disturbing the workers.

Many of the TPS philosophies are built on top of something very simple. By starting from something very simple, the system is constructed by focusing on topics by each dimension. Understanding what is happening at each dimension will deepen the understanding of the system and develop the capability to improve.