What the Covid virus can teach us about the Toyota Way
On February 1, 1997, a fire destroyed an Aisin plant (article in English) that made the inconspicuous P-Valve, a brake part needed in every Toyota vehicle around the world. Toyota's policy is to source any critical part from multiple geographic locations, but in this case, 99% of global production came from this single plant, which at the time made 32,500 parts a day. Toyota's admired JIT system meant that only two days of inventory were available across the entire supply chain. Two days, and disaster would strike. What came next was a great example of The Toyota Way in action. Responsibility for making the parts was distributed to 63 different firms, which pieced together whatever engineering documentation existed, used some of their own equipment, set up temporary lines to make the parts, and kept Toyota running smoothly.
The Toyota Way 2001 introduced a new house, one level above the TPS house. Continuous improvement and respect for people are the two pillars for the company's entire management system. Continuous improvement has three core principles — clarifying and taking on the challenge even when it seems impossible, going to see the current reality without preconceptions (genchi genbutsu), and relentless kaizen, which means starting to experiment quickly and scientifically. Respect for people has two core principles — getting your best people with different skills and expertise to work as a single team toward the challenge (teamwork) and respecting people, from the global community down to each individual.
Whether it is called “lean” or not, and most of the time it is not, we are seeing these principles spreading around the world as we face the common challenge of Covid-19. We are seeing laboratories developing tests and possible treatments at record speed. We are seeing automobile companies partnering with medical device companies to increase the number of ventilators in unprecedented volumes in record time. We are seeing frontline workers coming together to provide food, housing, medical care, and other social services while risking their lives.
I have been fortunate to work with Dr. Richard Zarbo, who runs the testing laboratory of the Henry Ford Health System (page in English). They have practiced lean thinking for 15 years and were able to use their skill to overcome a challenge as a team. On April 7, he wrote to me: “we are now doing molecular testing for Covid-19 in-house (for most of Michigan). We went from the first test in the state, on March 16, to more than 700 tests a day with five methods and ten instrument platforms, with 97% of results coming out in less than 24 hours. We have been told many times that we are saving lives. That is very good to hear”.
While Dr. Zarbo was doing the testing in a large laboratory, Abbott, another model lean company, was rapidly developing a five-minute test that would work with its standard ID NOW diagnostic device, one of the most common devices on the market, with 17,000 already in the field. The test was a cartridge to be inserted into the device and, within a month, Abbott began producing 50,000 of these cartridges a day, based on rapid FDA approval. While this was happening, other organizations developed antibody tests to see who had developed immunity.
It turns out that most of the organizations on the front lines of the pandemic battle have no experience with lean, but they are experiencing The Toyota Way without realizing it. The pandemic has forced people to come together with a passion, a common focus, and a new respect for scientific thinking. Suddenly, scientists are teaching us daily about how our bodies work, how viruses work at a cellular level, and what it takes at a molecular level to create a virus. Believe it or not, epidemiologists are cool!
Renowned lean practitioners have two core skills: bringing together a diverse team to achieve a disruptive goal and using a scientific, systematic approach to develop teams for success. Anyone who has taken part in a well-run kaizen event has already experienced the power of achieving something great as a team in a short period of time. The Toyota Way seeks to carry this forward into daily operations so that this experience becomes part of the culture. I hope that, after this crisis, many people around the world will have a greater appreciation for the power of scientific thinking, the power of collaboration, and the power of diversity. Perhaps we can focus some of these experiences on an existential crisis — saving the planet.
