What is ‘TPS’ and what is it all about?
Lance Richardson
Lance Richardson | International Manufacturing & Supply Chain Senior Leadership Executive | Certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt | Toyota Production System Consultant | Kaizen Specialist | Start-Up | German Fluent
What is ‘TPS’ and what is it all about, Lance?
Are we doing TPS because we’re doing a Lean Tool Implementation?
These are some recent questions that some have posed to me which prompted me to dive a little deeper to help them and their organizations.
The intention in this article is to only highlight some key aspects with TPS, personal learning's and provoke some extra thought from the reader. One can naturally expand on the topic and certain elements even further if they desire.
When the term “TPS” is used it could mean many different things depending on the person’s background, experience, and the overall total system maturity within their organization. TPS (i.e. Toyota Production System – Philosophy) is much more than just the Lean Bingo Card of Tools – Heijunka, Kanban, Standardized Work, etc.
“We did it, we implemented all the lean tools and doing TPS!”
Simple response to this is…
”No, I am deeply sorry as this is only the beginning.”
When TPS is referenced, one should understand there are three main focal points at Toyota within the company’s DNA and Philosophy which are as follows:
- Customer Needs
- Increase Fitness of Company
- People and Profit
Too often, these three aforementioned focal points are unknowingly left out, misunderstood, or not applied correctly when deriving and developing an organization and attempting to increase the maturity depth and breadth.
In this article I personally would like to highlight “People” and “Profit” element as these help connect Kaizen (as the base) to the first two focal points of Customer Needs and Increase Fitness of Company (ref. diagram) and some fundamental thinking that one must apply to fully embrace the “People and Profit” focal element.
Furthermore, “Development of People” is the key to success that leads to developing processes overall; it is truly the “Soft-Side” of lean and requires leadership (and their entire organization) at all levels to practice their approaches daily.
Follow Lance Richardson for the more articles in this “Developed People – Developing Profitable Processes” series
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Follow the TPS Post on the Kaizen Group
Director Engineering and Production Services North America
4 年TPS from my point of view a Is living philosophy that encompass a set of managerial skills to make problems visible and solve them quickly through people development in order to achieve the best quality at minimal cost while keeping our delivery performance within above?customer expectations
Cost Accountant | Proven Editorial Advisory Board Member | Helping Companies Translate Their Business Goals into Reality
4 年Lance Richardson do you have a good image of the TPS house I can use for a work presentation?
Experienced Operations Manager who taps peoples creative potential to maximize the performance of an organization.
4 年TPS, TOC, Six Sigma with a strategically driven balanced scorecard as the measuring stick will work as long as there is true employee involvement and empowerment focusing on the end customer and engaging all stakeholders of the value stream(s).
New Business Development
4 年Based on Lean Six Sigma, and modified for their needs