MINOMI PROJECT RESULTS

The following article is from the book, Developing Lean Leaders at All Levels, by Jeff Liker and George Trachilis. Join the revolution!

The teaching objectives for this section are to:

1.     Share the results of the Minomi Project at TMMK.

2.     Emphasize that a Lean Leader up to the level of president must set Kaizen in motion.

3.     Address questions to deepen understanding of the Kaizen process.

Figure 1. Minomi Project Results

So what was the result of this Minomi project with these B labor workers who were reporting to one super smart engineer, V.J.? See Figure 1. They eliminated 40 forklift trucks; freed up 100 line jobs; the team learned to build and program their own AGVs; and reduced cost throughout the plant wherever they used an AGV. These numbers were based on half the stamp parts, so for the other half, they would reduce another 100 line jobs and another 40 forklifts trucks. The project also involved leadership development. So V.J himself, as he led this activity, blossomed as leader. I walked in the plant with V.J. after the project was done and in fact a lot of the stages were still visible; they still had four different parts; they were in all six stages, so I was able to see the individual stages. As we walked around, the thing that struck me most was that V.J. knew everybody, and everybody called out to V.J., and usually they were calling him over because they wanted his help, and workers had ideas for improving this Minomi system. And V.J. is writing down these ideas and he's high-fiving people, and he's shaking hands and he looks like the most popular guy in the plant. Here's a guy who, a few years earlier, was known as being abrasive; he was a know-it-all; he wasn't relating well to the work force and now he was a super popular guy and everybody wanted to be on VJ's team so he was now selecting from a list of who he would allow on the team, and he had requirements for getting on his team. The reason they wanted to be on his team was because the level of training and development they got in Kaizen was phenomenal.

So this all blossomed because Gary Convis would spend time once a week with V.J.’s team and he really took this project seriously. Gary Convis the President who had 6000 people reporting to him and yet he personally was involved in this transformation, and when he saw this in Japan, he did not make the mistake of copying the result. He set in place a process of Kaizen to begin to experiment, to learn and overtime to develop this system and innovate beyond what they originally saw. So this is a really great example of Kaizen in action and the value of B labor and the way that you develop a top-notch Lean Leader like VJ.

So there is a question. I said that the revolution happened in three years, but did the phases really happen? Was each phase three years so the entire project took a decade to do? In three years they had gone through all these phases and having gone through all these phases doesn't mean that the entire body shop, all the stamp parts was now on Minomi. As I said, after three years only half the stamp parts were on Minomi and different stamp parts were on different phases so one of them was still being hand loaded from stamping and brought to the line. 

Another case: There is a Minomi cart that's set up in kits like the Set Parts System that brings kits to another portion of the line. So this was evolving and basically they were focusing on where they had a better business case and also whether the parts were coming in from suppliers in a way that fit what they were trying to do. It may well be that if the parts were coming in from the supplier, and they were made by a supplier stamping process, and they were in containers, there wasn't a good business case for immediately turning it into Minomi. But over time they would change that. I don't know where they are now; this was a number of years ago, and I suspect that it is fully Minomi now. All the stages happened within a few years.  

There is another more specific technical question that has been asked; If you are doing this Minomi conversion in stage, you're creating a more capacity, then as as people presumably did (with the AGVs). Would this, becoming more productive, result in creating an unbalanced line? Wouldn’t it cause more advance Minomi sections of the line to over build or produce more?  No. The reason that doesn't happen in Toyota plants is because they have focus on building to the customer demand rate, building to takt. So everybody's building to takt; so whether I have the parts well-presented or not I'm still only building and actually they are building the car bodies under the moving line, and I can only build when I have a cart coming to me. In that case, I might have too little work because some of the work has been taken away from me, and when you get enough non-valuable work taken away, enough waste taken out, now you can have one person doing two jobs, and that's one of the ways that they freed up 100 line jobs; gradually over time as they were taking waste off the line, they would have fewer workers doing more value-added tasks. But they still build to takt and that wouldn't change. 

There were periods of time where some people were under-worked until that point in time where the line could be re-balanced accordingly.  But I've been in other companies where they are copying Toyota, and one of the questions they have is: How can Toyota afford all these AGVs because they are paying $25,000 a pop and having a hard time justifying it. What they are not getting is that:

1)     there is a continuous improvement process - that in the early stages of this Minomi-Toyota was not getting a return on its’ investment.

2)      they only saw a return when they achieved a certain critical mass. that they were getting a return on investment.

And then after three years they were saving tens of millions of dollars a year, and then they figured out how to build the AGV themselves. That was part of the Kaizen process. Many times we do not see the entire Kaizen process. They're only seeing the first stage when we bought all these AGVs that cost a bunch of money, and we were not getting a return on investment; we were getting hounded and we were getting harassed by the boss who asked, “How does Toyota justify this?”

KPI for Stamping Plants in Japan

An excellent question was asked about how you communicate wins to other teams. So here you have VJ's team and he has a win in the body shop. They wanted to communicate that win with other parts of the plant in Georgetown, Kentucky (where this took place). Even more important is that they have a good communication within the plant. All the progress was closely being watched by Gary - who's the President - so he then can communicate it to the General Managers. The question now is how can you communicate to other plants in Toyota. One way is through plant tours. People come through and see people from other plants and they see engineers talk to each other; but they developed another mechanism for doing this. 

The mechanism was based on something they had started in Japan, and it was called benchmarking which sounds like you go and see and you compare yourself with other plants. But it was a much deeper process. What they had developed in Japan was that for each major department, for example, the body shop that welds, and they have stamping plant, and they have a plastic plant and they have an assembly plant and for each of these plants, they developed Key Performance Indicators, and they compared these Performance Indicators across all the other plants in that region so all the Japanese plants could see here in stamping or how we're doing and the Key Performance Indicators compared to all the other stamping plants in Japan. That itself is motivating because you don't want to be at the bottom. 

In addition to that, they had organized Kaizen activities once a quarter in each of the plants. All the stamping people from all the plants would come together for a week and they'd work on a Kaizen activity. That was then, also done in the United States.

Gary, in fact, helped to organize this initiative. He assigned a Vice President to be responsible and take the lead for that process across America. Each plant had a Welding Vice President, a Body Shop Vice President, and he took the lead to organize all the other Vice Presidents from all the other North American plants. For example, paint; it might have been in the Plant in Texas that took on the paint kaizen for all of the plants. Regardless, each plant had at least one Vice President who was leading this activity of learning from each other, and they would organize the Kaizen activities, and the first thing they had to do was to identify the Key Performance Indicators they were going to use. They got together at the different plants and they did these week-long Kaizen events. 

As you can imagine there was lots of learning. Number one: You're helping your competitor, but they don't want to be competitors, but you're helping that plant improve on their KPIs, and you are comparing yourself to them. But also, while you are there for a week, you really learn how they work in that shop. You'll get lots of ideas to bring home for making improvements. So that was an effective way of communicating because it was not just communicating; it was communicating and doing, communicating and doing Kaizen and seeing your score compared to others who were in the same sort of process.

One Minute Review

·        The results from the Minomi Project in Body Weld were amazing!

·        By the time it is done, it will have:

o  Freed up 200 line jobs

o  Eliminated 80 forklift trucks

o  Reduced cost by $21,000 for each AGV.

·        Gary Convis was personally involved in this transformation.

·        When he saw Minomi in Japan, he did not make the mistake of copying; he set in motion the process of kaizen.

·        Over 3 years Toyota Kentucky (TMMK) had gone through all of the phases, and had 50% more to do.

·        Becoming more efficient did not mean that Toyota would over produce, because they always build to takt.

·        Communicating a win like Minomi to other plants was a combination of identifying the KPIs and then holding a quarterly Kaizen event at each plant.

·        This is a great example of the power of B labor and a Lean Leader.

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Each of these articles can be found on Kindle, and as an audiobook in Audible under the title, DEVELOPING LEADERSHIP SKILLS.

All 75 learning articles is crafted together in the book, Developing Lean Leaders at All Levels: A Practical Guide, authored by Jeff Liker with George Trachilis. The book received the SHINGO RESEARCH AWARD. 

George Trachilis (left) and Jeff Liker receive the Shingo Research Award in Washington, D.C. (2016)