The Czech translation is published by Grada publishing house in cooperation with DMC management consulting and IPA Slovakia.
Each TWI & Kata Conference participant will receive a complimentary copy of the book.
Mike is co-author of two groundbreaking workbooks, Learning to See: value-stream mapping to add value and eliminate muda, which received a Shingo Research Award in 1999 and Creating Continuous Flow: an action guide for managers, engineers, and production associates, which received a Shingo Award in 2003. He co-developed the accompanying Training to See kit that teaches facilitators how to run value-stream mapping workshops. His latest book is Toyota Kata (McGraw-Hill). Mike is an engineer, a researcher, teacher, consultant, and speaker about management, leadership, improvement, adaptiveness, and change in human organizations. His affiliations have included the Industrial Technology Institute (Ann Arbor), the University of Michigan College of Engineering, the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (Stuttgart), and the Technical University Dortmund. Mike began his career in the manufacturing division of Thyssen AG in Germany. He lives in Ann Arbor, MI, and Cologne, Germany. Currently he concentrates on Kata principles implementation in education (Kata in the Classroom).
Further information
“Toyota Kata” by Mike Rother (2010) distinguishes itself from other books on the Toyota Production System in the way he describes the means of the tools that are used in Lean implementations. Tools like Heijunka (leveling of production) and Kanban are used within Toyota not with the goal to be implemented, but as a tool to find the next improvement. The continuous learning necessary to implement the tools is described by Rother as the improvement Kata, where Kata is Japanese for ‘organizational routines’. In addition to the improvement kata Rother also describes a Coaching Kata, which describes the need to coach people in sustaining the improvements in their processes.
Toyota Kata is a management book based on the basic principle that Lean is a culture, a management philosophy. I can recommend this book to managers who are managing organizational change. The book Toyota Kata consists of four parts, of which three are described in this article: the Improvement Kata (Part 3), the Coaching Kata (part 4) and Objectives for replication (section 5).
One part of the book describes the IMPROVE KATA in two chapters. A chapter on setting a target condition and a section on moving towards the target condition. The target condition can be explained as the ‘objective conditions’ which Rother describes as: “a description of a process that functions in a certain way”. When the target condition is defined, Rother describes the need to improve the current state of the processes by using the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle. PDCA is based on the principle of experimentation and learning. At Toyota, five questions are asked to guide improvements towards the target condition. Asking these questions will motivate employees to experiment more.
Part four of “Toyota Kata” describes COACHING KATA: Who will carry out improvements within Toyota (1) and what kind of leadership is necessary (2). Rother describes the misunderstanding that operators implement all improvements in their processes. In practice, 90% of the improvements to reduce costs and improve quality at Toyota are made by Team Leaders and engineers. The remaining 10% is improved by the operators themselves throughout a kaizen suggestion system.
Rother describes two leadership style features, which correspond to two of the principles that Liker (2004) describes in The Toyota Way. A leader is a teacher (1), and plan slowly – act quickly (2). All executives in the organization should spent 50% of their time coaching others. Managers do not provide the answer to problems but coach people so they can find their own answers. Coaching enables employees to use the PDCA cycle and can be linked to A3 forms. Filling an A3 takes a relatively long time, but serves both as a communication tool as well as documentation.
Section 5 describes how THEORY IS PUT IN PRACTICE. First, Rother argues that the improvement kata should be used to start up the improvement kata. This means the PDCA should be used to train people within your organization to improve. In addition, the improvement kata should be facilitated by internal employees and the management team should particulary play an important role.
