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The Toyota Production System is a paradox. On the one hand, every activity, connection, and
production flow in a Toyota factory is rigidly scripted. Yet at the same time, Toyota's operations are
enormously flexible and responsive to customer demand. How can that be?
After an extensive four-year study of the system in more than 40 plants, the authors came to
understand that at Toyota it's the very rigidity of the operations that makes the flexibility possible.
That's because the company's operations can be seen as a continuous series of controlled experiments.
Whenever Toyota defines a specification, it is establishing a hypothesis that is then tested through
action. This approach — the scientific method -- is not imposed on workers, it's ingrained in them.
And it stimulates them to engage in the kind of experimentation that is widely recognized as the
cornerstone of a learning organization.
The Toyota Production System grew out of the workings of the company over 50 years, and it has
never actually been written down. Making the implicit explicit, the authors lay out four principles that
show how Toyota sets up all its operations as experiments and teaches the scientific method to its
workers. The first rule governs the way workers do their work. The second, the way they interact with
one another. The third governs how production lines are constructed. And the last, how people learn
to improve. Every activity, connection, and production path designed according to these rules must
have built-in tests that signal problems immediately. And it is the continual response to those
problems that makes this seemingly rigid system so flexible and adaptive to changing circumstances.
When organizations are managed according to the four rules, individuals are repeatedly conducting
experiments, testing in operation the hypotheses built into the designs of individual work activities,
customer-supplier connections, pathways, and improvement efforts. Click here to see a summary of
the hypotheses, the way they are tested, and the response if they are refuted.
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/869.html 19/04/2011
Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System - HBS Working Knowledge Page 2 of 3
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This continuing process gives the person increasingly deeper insights into his or her own specific
work. From many experiences of this sort, the person gradually learns to generalize how to design all
activities according to the principles embodied in rule 1.
All the rules are taught in a similar Socratic fashion of iterative questioning and problem solving.
Although this method is particularly effective for teaching, it leads to knowledge that is implicit.
Consequently, the Toyota Production System had so far been transferred successfully only when
managers have been able and willing to engage in a similar process of questioning to facilitate
learning by doing.
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/869.html 19/04/2011
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intermediate good or
service.
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/869.html 19/04/2011