Management Lessons from Taiichi Ohno by Takehiko Harada

Author:Takehiko Harada
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2015-07-25T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 3

THE ROLE OF MANAGEMENT: ENABLE YOUR EMPLOYEES TO DO THE WORK WELL

In order to delegate and give authority, develop people who can be delegated to and be given authority.

To All You Managers Out There

When I ask Japanese managers at various companies, “What is your role?” most of them will say, “To harness the efforts of all employees to reach the goals of the department, and to improve the safety, quality, timing, and cost of the area given to me,” or something similar.

This may be something that is unique to Japan. Most people who work at Western companies have job descriptions, so when you ask them what their role is, they will respond with their job description. It will be hard to find a group of managers who will all respond the same way the Japanese managers do.

In a typical Japanese company, each department will direct more effort toward the areas that are not meeting their monthly improvement goals, and everyone will work to reach the goals in all the categories. Every company is competing, so rather than focusing on the process of kaizen or what was done, the results become the most important thing. I think that is why most Japanese managers—from those higher up to the supervisors—will respond the same way.

The interesting thing is that even though we are all governed by objectives and goals, if a problem occurs, Japanese managers will have no issues with going beyond their bounds of responsibility to help out and deal with the problem. People may think that the spirit of helping one another, having strong teamwork, and caring for one another are all relics of the past and are not found anymore. This spirit may have declined, but in most Japanese companies, it is still very much the norm and is fostered. So the fact that “my role” is not clear actually helps these firms achieve their targets.

When I was at Toyota, we all had to go through managerial training. Most of this training, however, was very general. In theory, it could be used everywhere, but if memory serves me right, that generality didn’t really match the needs of each individual work area, and so the usefulness of the training was rather limited.

A manager in Toyota’s production area is working in the environment of the Toyota Production System, without extra inventory and in a very fast flow. If a problem arises, within moments he may shut down his department, other departments, and even the entire assembly factory. That kind of environment requires a fast resolution, and so one has to know who to call for what issue beforehand.

Most of the managers believed that they should go to the gemba to see whether the inventory in process and between processes was correct, and whether people were working to the standard method. They also believed that they needed to invest time in eliminating areas where defects could happen.

When a problem that would seriously affect multiple departments arose, the affected departments would be notified, and they would work together on a temporary stopgap.

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