The special “Lean Manufacturing” issue of our newsletter, published in June 2010, turned out to be very controversial. I perhaps should not have been surprised, as the title of my editorial was a punchy “Lean & TPM: beyond the hype, delivering sustainable results”… I highlighted the specifities of maintenance in China, which we are rather familiar with, and explained why they should be taken into account: a Lean production process puts enormous pressure on equipment reliability, a major weakness at most plants. One of the key points I raised was the necessity to reduce the breakdown rate before implementing autonomous maintenance activities as part of TPM.

When talking to Lean practitioners, our advices are often dismissed: “you do not know about Lean”. We often face the belief that Lean magically solves every problem: I even heard a speaker at a major conference declaring that Lean made the maintenance department totally useless at its plant, as now production knew the equipment better, had better qualified people, while maintenance was just a bunch of low-skill workers. A general manager once told me that obtaining a TPM Award was his only concern, anything else (in this case, maintenance improvement) was just a waste of time, a distraction. This expatriate GM was obviously on an upward career path and has already left China.

Although sometimes talking to people or companies that have made Lean their religion is difficult, we have also obtained excellent results with executives that have a more in-depth understanding of their production equipment. For example, in the past few years, Siveco has achieved great improvement with automotive suppliers such as Brose (Wuhan plant), or paper makers like International Paper (several sites across China), equipment manufacturers like Alstom Wuhan Boiler Company, enterprises that have put efforts both on Lean initiatives and maintenance improvement programs.

Then something unexpected happened recently: I was recommended to read articles by Art Smalley, a well-known expert of Lean and the Toyota Production System (TPS). One of the few Americans to have worked for Toyota in Japan for an extended period of time, Art has experienced all facets of production life in Toyota (from working on assembly lines, maintaining precision equipment, to project management). Proficient in reading and writing Japanese, he certainly has keen insights on TPS that few Westerners possess. What Art had to say turned out to be a very good surprise to me:

“There is a decided over-emphasis in the west on simply using the tools of TPS. More attention needs to be applied on solving systemic manufacturing problems that will generate business results”. A leading Lean expert was in total agreement with us! Art kindly agreed that we publish one of his articles in our modest newsletter – and not just any article, but nothing less than an interview of Mr. Tom Harada, who spent 35 years with Toyota and worked under Taiichi Ohno, on the topic of equipment maintenance!

We are very proud to share this article, initially published in www.artoflean.com, with our Chinese audience. I hope our readers will enjoy it as much as I did and see that it just makes sense. Finally, I would like to sincerely thank Mr. Art Smalley and Mr. Tom Harada for their kind support and hope to create fruitful exchanges between sensible Lean practitioners in different parts of the world.

Tomo “Tom” Harada spent 35 years with Toyota Motor Corporation in a variety of management positions in engineering, maintenance, and manufacturing. Early in his career he helped start the famous Kamigo engine plant where Taiichi Ohno was the original plant manager. Kamigo was Toyota’s first highly automated plant in 1965 and a pioneer effort in the implementation of different TPS concepts.

Art:
Thank you for agreeing to spend some time together and answer some questions about equipment maintenance and its role in supporting TPS.

Mr. Harada:
No problem, my pleasure. Not too many people are interested in this topic.

Art:
I suppose not. Why is that?

Mr. Harada:
Equipment maintenance is one of the hidden strengths of Toyota but it does not get a lot of attention. However try to run a pull system or achieve standardized work if the machine is breaking down and kicking out bad parts all day long…you won’t get very far.

Art:
I suppose not. So why did equipment maintenance in Toyota become so strong?

Tom:
I think the proverb is that “necessity is the mother of every invention”? When I started at Kamigo engine plant we imported virtually every machine tool from the U.S. or Germany. It was tough to make contact with the equipment vendors, order spare parts, get technical information, or even read the documentation etc. for trouble shooting. We were forced to take things apart by ourselves make sketches and make copies or improvements ourselves. Over time we ordered replacement machines from our internal machine tool company Toyoda Machine Works. Initially the replacement machines were all just basic copies of the foreign machines and we in maintenance and engineering had to give them detailed specifications on how to make key parts of the machines especially jigs, fixtures, clamping devices, locating pads, datum points, etc. It is part of our culture to do this probably more so than in the United States. You learn a lot though by disassembly, sketching, and making small improvements. Over two decades we came to build much of our equipment at Toyota affiliated companies and now it is even export it to the world as well.

Art:
You don’t hear much about this in the popular press about equipment and TPS. Occasionally you hear vague references about “right-sizing” equipment but that is not the crux of the issue here is it?

Tom:
No I suppose not. Toyota does not advertise how it copied foreign machine tools in the early days or how it designs production processes. We know what aspects of the production process to maintain better than our competitors.

External parties visiting the company are usually looking only at superficial things like kanban, flow, or standardized work charts. They can’t see why the mechanical process is actually working well. That requires much technical skill and engineering knowledge. It is the hidden strength of TPS that all our machines work well and we maintain them properly. Otherwise TPS would not work so effectively.

Art:
So maintenance and process engineering are somewhat unsung heroes of TPS?

Tom:
I am of course biased by my background but the people who plan the production process we call them production engineering, the tooling engineers, the machine tool builders, and the manufacturing engineers and maintenance people in the plant all play critical roles that are not well understood outside of Toyota. It is not so important for a final assembly line but for an engine machining line the process technology and ability to maintain the process is extremely critical. This is also much harder to learn and copy than a simple value stream map or a standardized work chart.

You’ll notice incidentally that Toyota is very open about certain parts of its production system but very, very closed about other parts. Tooling, production engineering, are most equipment suppliers are still kept in Japan for the most vital processes. There is a reason for this of course.

Art:
Why give away the secrets to the temple so to speak?

Tom:
Exactly. Toyota has to keep some sort of competitive advantage.