- Quality
“Fall seven times. Stand up eight.”
-Old Japanese Proverb.
“If you see a snake, just kill it – don’t appoint a committee on snakes.”
Anonymous
“just do it”
Mentality of kaizen. Ross Perot
“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“You can act your way into good thinking faster than you can think your way into good actions.”
Anonymous
“Your Lean Process should be a Lean Process.”
Anonymous
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but habit.”
Aristotle
Tell me and I will forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I’ll understand.
Anonymous
“Quick and Crude is better than Slow and Elegant”
Anonymous
“Different isn’t always better…but better is always different”
Anonymous
“We will win and you will lose. You cannot do anything because your failure is an internal disease. Your companies are based on Taylor’s principles. Worse, your heads are Taylorized too. You firmly believe that sound management means executives on the one side and workers on the other, on the one side men who think and on the other side men who only work.”
Konusuke Matsushita
“Why not make the work easier and more interesting so that people do not have to sweat?
Anonymous
The Toyota style is not to create results by working hard. It is a system that says there is no limit to people’s creativity.
“Continuous Improvement is not about the things you do well— that’s work. Continuous Improvement is about removing the things that get in the way of your work. The headaches, the things that slow you down, that’s what Continuous Improvement is all about.”
Anonymous
Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
- Henry Ford
“Managers will try anything easy that doesn’t work before they will try anything hard that does work.”
- Jim Womack
“If Lean is common sense, it would be more common”
Anonymous
“You should not need an MBA to understand the numbers in your company.”
- Jean Cunningham
“Everyone gets the experience; some get the lesson”
– T.S. Eliot
“Planning is priceless. The plan itself is useless”
–Gen. Binford Peay
“It is management that cause companies to fail, not employees”
Anonymous
“A foolproof system is no match for a system-proof fool!”
Anonymous
“I suppose one ought not to employ a magician and then complain that he does not behave like other people.”
Anonymous
“Time waste differs from material waste in that there can be no
salvage. The easiest of all wastes and the hardest to correct is the waste
of time, because wasted time does not litter the floor like wasted
material”
- Henry Ford, 1926
“I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall
adopt new views so fast as they appear to be true views”
- Abraham Lincoln,1862
“If you need a new process and don’t install it, you pay for it
without getting it”
- Ken Stork, past president of AME
To go along with the quote-”Different isn’t always better…but better is always different”
Anonymous
“You can act your way into good thinking faster than you can think your way into good actions.”
Anonymous
“Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems that we created with our current patterns of thought.”
- Albert Einstein
“I would rather get a person to think than buy a new car. After all, a car is just a piece of metal.”
- Anthony P. Hales
“First we’ll make it work – then we’ll make it pretty”
“Go slow to go fast.”
- Toyota expression
“Failure to change is a vice! I want everyone at Toyota to change and at least do not be an obstacle for someone else who wants to change.”
Hiroshi Okuda, Senior Advisor, board member and former chairman of Toyota Motor Corp.
5-Why Analysis:
For want of a nail a shoe was lost,
for want of a shoe a horse was lost,
for want of a horse a rider was lost,
for want of a rider an army was lost,
for want of an army a battle was lost,
for want of a battle the war was lost,
for want of the war the kingdom was lost,
and all for the want of a little horseshoe nail.
- Benjamin Franklin’s
“You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing there will be no result.”
-Mahatma Gandhi
“The road to success is always under construction”
- Chinese proverb
Never mistake motion for action
– Ernest Hemingway
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
-Charles Darwin
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
-Sir Winston Churchill
“The Biggest room, is the room for improvement”
– Chinese proverb
“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
– Leonardo da Vinci
“In times of change the learners will inherit the earth, while the knower will find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
-Eric Hoffer
“Do you believe that you can learn how to become a Marine by reading books and applying what you learned? NO!”
“Be quick, but don’t hurry.”
- John Wooden
“Reward those who Do,
Train those who Can’t,
Replace those who Won’t”
- Henn’s Creed
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”
- Albert Einstein
Time is merely the shadow of motion
Four goals of improvement: 1) make things easier 2) better 3) faster and 4) cheaper
Delays are less a matter of time and more an effect of timing
It is more important to know-why than know-how
Unless people’s motion add value they are useless toward the goal
Are our specifications or frequencies too tight for accomplishing the task?
There are two reasons why we change. We learn enough that we want to or we hurt enough that we have to
““Only fools worship their tools””
-Dee Hock
Another way to remember the eight wastes:
D…Defects
O…Over-production
W…Waiting
N…Non-utilized Resources/talent
T…Transportation
I…Inventory
M…Motion
E…Excess Processing
"The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.”
—George Bernard Shaw
"People say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing – that's why we recommend it daily."
– Zig Ziglar
"Complexity is a crude state; simplicity is the end of a process of refinement."
- Pascal Dennis
"At Toyota a manager's job is to practice and teach P-D-C-A."
The formula to assess changing the culture:
HxVxF > R
H is Hatred for the current reality, V is the Vision of the ideal state, F is the courage to take the First Steps (take a risk), and R is the natural resistance to change.
- "Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean".
"Corporate executives are…accustomed to keeping up with the latest management fads through books, seminars, executive education. The danger with attempts at learning TPS through such means is that some readers have a tendency to think that if they've read about something they know it."
-John Shook from the Forward of The Toyota Way Field book
"Clear awareness of problems and a very low tolerance for the current condition is the proper attitude and the right starting point for TPS or Lean."
“The desire to do good work is seldom satisfied by just getting by”.
- Richard Sennett
“Applying the Toyota Production System outside the shop floor can be done but this takes some creativity”,
- Fujio Cho
“Change is like heaven, everyone wants to do it, but not right now.”
“Culture eats strategy every time” from “Good to Great”.
“Change before you have to”
- Jack Welch.
Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing… layout, processes, and procedures.
- Tom Peters
Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence – only in constant improvement and constant change.
-Tom Peters
The 8 Process Wastes “TRIM WOOD”
T – Transportation
R – Resources
I – Inventory
M – Motion
W – Waiting
O – Over-processing
O – Over production
D – Defects / rework
There are so many men who can figure costs, and so few who can measure values.
- Anonymous
A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin. Methods have to change. Focus has to change. Values have to change. The sum total of those changes is transformation.
~Andrew Grove
Continuous improvement is not about the things you do well - that's work. Continuous improvement is about removing the things that get in the way of your work. The headaches, the things that slow you down, that’s what continuous improvement is all about.
~Bruce Hamilton
Everything can be improved.
~Clarence W. Barron
Willful waste brings woeful want.
~Thomas Fuller
There are many experts on how things have been done up to now. If you think something could use a little improvement, you are the expert.
~Robert Brault
Amateurs work until they get it right. Professionals work until they can't get it wrong.
- Anonymous
It is not the employer who pays the wages. He only handles the money. It is the product that pays the wages.
~Henry Ford, 1922, also sometimes quoted as "It is the customer that pays the wages"
Nature does constant value stream mapping - it's called evolution.
~Carrie Latet
Don't waste time learning the "tricks of the trade." Instead, learn the trade.
~James Charlton
Time waste differs from material waste in that there can be no salvage. The easiest of all wastes and the hardest to correct is the waste of time, because wasted time does not litter the floor like wasted material.
~Henry Ford
Waste is a tax on the whole people.
~Albert W. Atwood
When solving problems, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves.
~Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book
It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises but only performance is reality.
~Harold Geneen
We are too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet.
- Anonymous
Watch the little things; a small leak will sink a great ship.
~Benjamin Franklin
Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.
~Thomas A. Edison
It is more than probable that the average man could, with no injury to his health, increase his efficiency fifty percent.
~Walter Scott
The essential question is not, "How busy are you?" but "What are you busy at?"
~Oprah Winfrey
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
~Bill Gates
The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.
~Albert Einstein
If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.
~Lawrence J. Peter
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
~C. Northcote Parkinson, 1958
On the bathing-tub of King T'ang the following words were engraved: "If you would one day renovate yourself, do so from day to day. Yea, let there be daily renovation."
~Confucian Analects
An environment where people have to think brings with it wisdom, and this wisdom brings with it kaizen [continuous improvement].
~Teruyuki Minoura
The impossible is often the untried.
~Jim Goodwin
The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.
~Henry Ford
If you don't have time to do it right you must have time to do it over.
- Anonymous
Ford's success has startled the country, almost the world, financially, industrially, mechanically. It exhibits in higher degree than most persons would have thought possible the seemingly contradictory requirements of true efficiency, which are: constant increase of quality, great increase of pay to the workers, repeated reduction in cost to the consumer. And with these appears, as at once cause and effect, an absolutely incredible enlargement of output reaching something like one hundredfold in less than ten years, and an enormous profit to the manufacturer.
~Charles Buxton Going
Great ideas need landing gear as well as wings.
~C.D. Jackson
Different isn't always better, but better is always different.
- Anonymous
He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.
~Harold Wilson
Invest a few moments in thinking. It will pay good interest.
- Anonymous
Don't water your weeds.
~Harvey MacKay
You must have long-range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short-range failures.
~Charles C. Noble
I don't like a man to be too efficient. He's likely to be not human enough.
~Felix Frankfurter
If all efficiency experts were laid end to end - I'd be in favor of it.
~Al Diamond
One half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it.
~Sidney Howard
I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they appear to be true views.
~Abraham Lincoln
It is better to stir up a question without deciding it, than to decide it without stirring it up.
~Joseph Joubert
A certificate does not make you certified. Attitude, performance, commitment to self and team - these and a certificate make you certified.
Implementing Lean concepts and principles is not a technological issue, it is primarily a management and human resource issue.”
– Kenneth E. Kirby, Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at The University of Tennessee