The Toyota Way - viewed as feedback control

Here I look at Jeffrey Liker's view of The Toyota Way, and twist it around to show that a hierarchical, nested control-loop model fits the data, which I will later show provides some insight that's not otherwise evident.

The first conclusion is the same theme I've been trying to work on - that personal health, social population health, and corporate health are not mortal enemies. They are, in fact, joined at the hip. The "loose coupling" is magnified by feedback loop compounding so much that there really is only one "mathematical" entity here on this planet, and it includes people, corporations, nations, and computer systems, as well as the supporting plant and animal life. We need to plan around that reality, or our plans will just keep on failing.

I plan to show that the Toyota Way is strong precisely because it meets that challenge and aligns the multiple levels and threads.

So, I start with Liker's diagram 1.1 from his book "The Toyota Way", above.



Then I invert it, because the rest of my model views this from the other side, and I see "causality" and "resting on" going downwards, not upwards.

That gives three axes - small to large, many to few, rapid to slow.
But, I want to swap people and processes in this diagram, because processes and problems are more related than that diagram shows.

And, it's not really problems, despite breaking the words-that-start-with-P rule, that I don't think is a natural constraint. STEPS make up Processes. I want to start with the way a HEALTHY organism looks and functions, not one with something that's broken. LATER we can deal with how "errors" at every scale, horizontal and vertical, high and low, can be detected, compared to the "me" and "not me" decision that "immune systems" make, and responded to gracefully at all levels simultaneously. (pulling the cord is just one way to do this.)


And, people make up Society. (This is consistent with Liker, and Philosophy, long-term-thinking, and social goals all sort of merge.)
So that looks somewhat better.
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But the transitions between levels aren't symmetric. I like symmetric. I love symmetric, actually, and think Nature loves symmetric, because it's so much easier to learn and compute.
Symmetric across levels (scale-invariant) is a very popular design pattern on this planet, and it tends to work and be the easiest possible way to stack things.


so, we'll pull "people" out, for just a moment, and try "business" in that slot. Yes, that works much more smoothly up the chain. The transitions are all "composes" / "composed of" relationships now.
Then, I want to put people back in, but everywhere.


OK, Each step of this ladder or hierarchy now is something that has a local identity and local self-sustaining (homeostatic / allostatic) control loops in place. In the ball rolling on surface analogy, these each have locally defined "notches" or "grooves" where they try to keep the ball, and where it will roll "naturally" , given the dent in the terrain that the local control system has created.

But, this actually has "N-factorial" control loops. Not only does each level, taken one at a time, have a control system, but each pair of levels, (taken 2 at a time), has a control system to maintain their relationship:
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If those control systems break, we call things "out of line" or "broken" or "Not working smoothly". We want steps to make up processes stably, and processes to work together to make up business entities, and business entities to work together (!) to form stable societies. (all of which requires people and affects people at every step - some other detailed loops I'm leaving out.)

Skipping the N=3 control loops, and N=4, etc, (departments, divisions, groups), we can get to the far end of that list, and look at the single loop that holds everything together, taken N at a time. This is the loop driven by "Pull" downward, which changes substrate and becomes "cars", which changes to "met needs" which changes to "social support and cash inflow" and return business and helpful regulatory climates and laws, which sustains both business and social and personal needs, and so is stable. We have found a "loop invariant" that works for people, teams, business units, business, societies, a nation, and a planet scale.

We can look for a moment at HOW this loop feedback is carried, and ponder the "visual" cards and "cords" used at Toyota. The key to any of it is "transparency". It should be obvious to anyone, inside or outside the unit, walking by, how they are doing. Not only are things not hidden, they are "worn on the sleeve." The internal health of the "cell" is reflected directly in what proteins are displayed proudly on its external surface for all passers by to see.


Now, if we look at the "people" aspect of this thingie, this multilevel living entity, we see that the people thread is actually multilevel too. We can see from DNA, making up cells, making up body systems,making up bodies, making up families and teams, making up communities and departments, making up businesses and societies and what public health calls "populations".
That thread has to be whole, and healthy, or this whole deal falls apart on that.

If the people are all sick, they are poor workers, poor consumers, and won't support the social structure continuing whatever it is that's wrong. If you destroy the ecosystem that supports the people, that's not a very stable long-term business model either.

Employees are people. They don't suddenly appear at 8 AM and disappear at 5 PM every day.
They have lives. If the lives don't "work", there goes your customer base and your workforce and your management team, all at once.

Finally, there are control systems at the non-DNA side of this double helix vine that grows up and around the core hierarchical trellice. That's the computer or IT side, including robots.
This has a similar ladder, from actuators to "arms" to process control systems to business control systems and customer relaiton systems to social control systems and regulatory legal systems. Again, for this to be adaptive and responsive and agile, it has to be healthy top to bottom, and all similarly chained up with a hierarchy of internal controls that reshape it, so that each of the individual components can have its own perceptions, self-control model, and action set that it can do -- and, if you add all these up, they are not only compatible, but the whole thing produces a product (cars), meets social needs, develops the people, develops the teams, develops the organization, and develops the society.
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This last slide is an illustration that "you can't beat city hall". The long-range, large-scale "dent" in the world that higher parts or contexts create will compete and win over small-range, local "dents" that local control systems create.

If you add up the slopes, you end up with the bottom diagram, where the local dent is now tipped and "won't hold water" anymore. Nothing that happens locally can overcome that problem.

If the higher context is aligned with society and good things, this misalignment is a good thing, and will put pressure on the local structure to move its goal over to where everyone else is.

If the higher context is misaligned and the local context is good, well, that's bad news. Again, sooner or later the larger context (society) will win out, but locally the misdirected efforts will appear to be winning, even though they are continually defeating local efforts to align with the global good. Nothing can survive, long term, if the contexts above and below and around it are pulling it some other way, because, if we move up a scale, it now is the "local" entity and Society is the "global" entity. Things will just keep breaking. That is not a "solution" to the problem that will be stable, grow, thrive, and be a good investment.

Moral - Either we solve EVERYTHING or we solved nothing.
Toyota tackled everything.
Trying to pick up some part of that scheme and apply it just to manufacturing, while ignoring the rest of the "Toyota Way philosophy" won't actually ever work, according to that model.

Toyota, Lean Thinking, Pull, and the role of Religion

Toyota is the envy of much of the world, particularly the area near the "Big-three" auto manufacturers in Detroit, Michigan, USA.

Two very popular studies of Toyota's "secret" is the book Lean Thinking, by James Womack and Daniel Jones, and The Machine that Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production
by the same authors. The Lean Institute says:

In this landmark study of the automobile industry, Jim Womack, Dan Jones, and Daniel Roos explain lean production to the world for the first time, and discuss its profound implications for society. It is based on the largest and most thorough study ever undertaken in any industry: the MIT five-million-dollar, five-year, fourteen-country International Motor Vehicle Program’s study of the worldwide auto industry.

Philip Caldwell, Chairman and CEO, Ford Motor Company (1980-1985) had this to say about "Machine"

Truly remarkable.... The most comprehensive, instructive, mind-stretching and provacative analysis of any major industry I have ever known. Why pay others huge consulting fees? Just read this book.

The cover of "lean thinking" cmments:

Instead of constantly reinventing business models, lean thinkers go back to basics by asking what the customer really perceives as value.

It goes on to talk about terms such as value stream, flow, cycle, perfection, and pull.

It is the concept "pull" that I want to focus on in this post.

Womack says this (Chapter 4, page 67 of the 2003 revised edition)

Pull in simplest terms mans that no one upstream should produce a good or service until the customer downstream asks for it, but actually following this rule in practice is a bit more complicated. The best way to understand the logic and challenge of pull thinking is to start with a real customer expressing a demand for a product and to work backwards through all the steps required to bring the desired product to the customer.

Now, the authors have way more industrial experience than I do, with a mere MBA and most of an MPH, and a single "lean workshop" under my belt -- but I have my model to bring to bear on this question and raise some new ways to view pull. So I will be undaunted and proceed to offer some suggestions and reinterpretations of the same data for the reader's consideration.

First, in light of a multi-level approach to everything, we should realize that "customer" is not only plural in a horizontal sense (many drivers of vehicles), but in a vertical sense (the dealers, the supply chain, the auto industry, society, etc.)

Second, in light of feedback's description of everything in terms of closed process loops, not open-ended chains, we should complete the loop from the customer back to the company and look at how many times that loop will be travelled. (This is the "multiplier" of any "small" improvement we can make in the loop process.)

Third, in light of the multiple-scale, multiple-lens approach, we should move back ten paces and zoom the lens down so we see far more of the picture in space and time, and realize that customers often are repeat customers, or even lifetime customers. In that sense, not only does the satisfaction of this car matter, but it matters many times over in terms of the next cars this person, and their friends and family will buy the rest of their lives, and their children, etc.

Also, as we view Toyota over time, we have to note that the Toyota miracle, and the Honda miracle, started small, at about zero, competing with a firmly entrenched US Auto industry. The approach used by Toyota was slow, patient, long-term focus combined with a focus on the needs of everyday people, poor people, people the workers could relate to, in a country demolished by World War II.

And, in context, we should realize that "product engineer" in Japan has the same cachet and social status as "aerospace engineer" or "rocket scientist" in the USA.

So, the context here is that the workers respected and cared about the customers, and the customers cared about and respected the workers.

Now, finally, we can look at "pull", not as a production scheduling technique with optimal mathematical qualities, but as a human caring mechanism that had the potential to shape, or drive the Toyota engine -- with money being second. The "work" had a role, in the minds of the workers, of connecting them to the customers, which was a desired state.

This is where the light of religion, we can speculate that two more effects come to play. One is illustrated by the motto of Boy's Town in the US:

He ain't heavy father, he's my brother!

The second is a story I've told before, probably made up but it touches a truth:

In the middle ages, a quality control specialist came to work on a production problem in a church being built. Some stonemasons were doing work that was not high quality and needed to be redone, and others were doing excellent work consistently. The specialist asked one of the poorer workers what he was doing, and the reply came "I'm building this wall." Then he asked one of the best workers what he was doing, and the reply came "I'm building a cathedral!"

What these stories suggest is that there is a driving force, and a shaping force, that dramatically alters the functioning of people - and it is related, surprise, to purpose and meaning of "the same" action. The quality and sustainability of a worker's efforts depends on what it is they believe they are doing, and what larger picture it fits into.

If this effect has a significant effect, it probably means that "the customer" isn't actually viewed as "a customer" by the worker, but is viewed instead as "a person." "If I do my job well, and everyone does their jobs well, then old Mr. Lee will be able to afford a car and visit his children and his ancestor's graveside!"

This kind of bouyancy can make heavy objects lighter, and "impossible tasks" suddenly possible. I'll relate this later to much research on the impact of such "psychology" on worker output, innovation, creativity, willingness to change or share, etc. It is more like lifting "heavy" objects in the water than in the air -- they have the same mass but much less weight. Being filled with this kind of "spirit" really does make a difference in hard-nose measured output.

Interesting. And kind of what religion has been urging us to do for centuries.

This view, or focus, or framework shifts what aspects of the "lean" technique are most important, and which aspects are just artifacts. It changes how the process looks and how it should be managed.

So, it should be evaluated to see if it holds up to a formal study.

I recall also one last item of interest. When the head of Toyota was first approached by Americans who wanted to learn about their production techniques, there was great concern by some that Toyota would lose its edge. He thought about this and finally said, basically "Let them come. The Americans will never be able to do this. They don't have the necessary spirit in dealing with each other."

We recall that W. Edwards Deming of Quality Control also had no luck getting his message heard by Americans, and finally went, by invitation, to Japan and gave all of Japan a 20 year lead on the US on such techniques. They weren't "secret" but they were "not hearable" by American management.

This factor needs to be considered as well, and the source of "resistance" to such ideas identified and rooted out, if this technique is to bloom and thrive here.