C... Change Board

In 2019, during my visit to the Lexus ecosystem, I discovered a practice that blew my mind. I wrote it down in my notebooks and tried to test it on several occasions, but as time went by, this idea fell far down my list of priorities....

I rediscovered it on my learning tour this year, visiting a number of Toyota subcontractors. The funny thing is that several of my mates who were with me in Fukuoka swore they'd never seen it, even though we were together! This story shows how memory works, and also illustrates that learning comes from practice, not from observation and classroom lessons... but that's not the subject of this column.

This is the Henkaten board, in English the Change board.?It seems so simple in practice that it hardly needs mentioning. And it's one of the most powerful tools I've seen. It's based on a fairly obvious observation: every change leads to variability, and variability is almost always a source of error. So you need to be extremely vigilant about all changes to anticipate future errors.

The simplest version of the Henkaten board, the one used on a daily basis in a workshop, looks like the photo.

The associated practice consists of questioning each line of the table (each of the "M" generally associated with the Ishikawa diagram, Man, Method, Machine, Material) to ask what changes are planned. For example, this could be the arrival of a temporary worker, a change of material supplier, a new machine, etc. For each change, specify what the risks are and what the countermeasures are. It only takes 5 minutes. And a lot of (un)pleasant surprises are avoided.

What I discovered this time is that this Change board can be created and used at every level of the company, with a list of themes and an adapted frequency of questioning. For example, at production line level, you can detect and anticipate changes brought about by the introduction of a new model, or the manufacture of a low-runner product; at plant level, changes in the supply chain or in the information system... and any other change. Each time, it's a question of reflecting together on the possible consequences and countermeasures. If necessary, a standard checklist is defined and can be used.

In using this seemingly simple table, I can see the aim of many pull-flow tools: to get teams to stop being subjected to events and start becoming real players. It's a tool for reducing variability and improving the conditions for success (see letter A ... Autonomy[1]).

Of course, the power of the tool... and its difficulty... lies in the collective reflection on countermeasures. There's no point in making lists of changes if that's where the thinking stops.

It should also be noted that this practice seems to be completely unknown outside the Toyota sphere (other Japanese companies interviewed spoke of 'Toyota tricks' without knowing anything more about them).Which brings us to the same conclusion: Lean is no more Japanese than it is European ... it's really Toyota's business.

Will I really be able to learn this time, and therefore try out the Change Board, or is it just another thing I'll be filing away in my memory of 'interesting things'?

I hope to be able to share some experiences soon...

Cécile Roche

[1] https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/autonomy-cecile-roche%3FtrackingId=yXnIiNEidSjt0A77UOW3BA%253D%253D/?trackingId=yXnIiNEidSjt0A77UOW3BA%3D%3D..