Lean Connections

A guest posting by Andrew Dillon

Extraordinary times call on us to look again to the core of the Toyota revolution and how we can make it our own

Strange things happen in a crisis. Consider, for example, that some companies, in retrenchment mode, are cutting back on investments that not too long ago they were eager to make in learning and implementing the principles of the Toyota Production System. At least part of the market for improvement seems to be shrinking, in other words, at precisely the moment when just about everything in the marketplace seems to need improvement.

This is more than just strange. After all, Toyota’s management system was forged as a response to severe economic hardship, its basic mindset tempered by the threat of catastrophe. Circumstances have changed over the years, of course, but the Toyota system has proven to offer a potent and strikingly reliable way to survive-and even thrive-against fierce competition, in hard times as well as good. Its signal strengths – relentless cost cutting, commitment to people and dedication to long-term vision – are made for crisis.

Clearly the message is not lost on some businesses, where leaders are intensifying their focus on learning lean. But other companies remain a puzzlement. Why, when they stand to profit from it most, are some retreating from efforts to reap the benefits of the Toyota revolution?  read more »

Two apparently unrelated (at first glance, anyway) e-mails I received this morning caught my attention.

Jim Womack (Machine That Changed the World, Lean Thinking, Lean Solutions) wrote about how General Motors must repurpose itself before it restructures.  The idea, of course, being that each organization needs customers who will derive some value from what the organization actually delivers. A restructuring to reduce costs and thereby generate profits actually doesn’t do much for the customer. As Jim puts it:

 ”What does your organization do to solve customer problems better than competitors so that customers old and new will pay good money for your services and goods and buy more over time?”

And then I read a second e-mail, a press release from Ryanair, which describes itself as “Europe’s largest low fare airline.” Ryanair has been running a contest in which passengers submit suggestions which can be turned into revenue generators for the airline. In other words, what do passengers value and what are they willing to pay good money for (in addition to the actual service of being flown from point A to point B, I suppose).  So what will Ryanair passengers shell out for?  Here are the top five items, based on the number of passenger votes received (note: O’Leary refers to Michael O’Leary – shown at right - the airline’s CEO):

1. €1 for toilet paper – with O’Leary’s face on it,
2. €2 “corkage” fee for passengers who bring their own food,
3. €5 annual subscription to access Ryanair.com,
4. €3 to smoke in a converted toilet cubicle,
5. Excess fees for overweight passengers based on body mass index.

The poll ends April 17th. I’ll be following to see which, if any, of these suggestions Ryanair actually implements. After all, what’s the point of asking for suggestions if you’re not planning to deliver on any of them?  Although I guess I’m also trying to figure out why anyone would want to pay for this stuff and what customer problems these suggestions might be solving.

Finally, is there anything GM might learn from this exercise?  We’ll leave that question for another day.