The nIEM system implements the jidoka methodology. This is how it is used in business and what results are achieved.
"The essence of Jidoka is to make the hidden problems clear. If the problems
are hidden they will never be resolved."
T. Harada, the manager of Toyota Motor Corporation
Jidoka is the most misunderstood principle of the Toyota
production philosophy.
There are two reasons for this. Firstly, literal translation, ‘intelligent
machines’ (‘self-monitoring machinery’) narrows the meaning from the outset, and, secondly, the
perception of the idea (properly reflected in the epigraph) by an average Homo Sapiens (AHS) is far
too complex.
As for the translation, everything is clear; and as for the difficult perception of
the approach, we will try our best to illustrate its origin.
In principle, there are two approaches to solving any problem:
you can either remove the cause of the problem or struggle against the symptoms.
Everything is
clear from the title, but nevertheless we shall cite the following examples:
- for the human body – treatment for pneumonia vs. subduing fever with antipyretic;
- for a trading company — the elimination of the causes of customer complaints, as opposed to closing the forum with too many complaints on the corporate website;
- for a state — pushing the country into the world development mainstream vs. massive brainwashing on why life in shit, governed by pieces of shit, actually results from the nation’s Sovewreign, Third Way, Spiritual, Orthodox Christian, etc… DNA code.
- and so on.
The same dilemma of choosing between the removal of the root cause and wiping off the symptoms exists in business. Still, in business situations the picture is even more lively as the boundaries between the roots and the symptoms are blurred by lots of rational incentives to choose the cheaper way of sweeping problems under the carpet.
Let’s look at a more than real example. First, we suggest our
readers have a look at our text describing the technology of automatic advance
orders which the Ultimate e-Trade solution is based on.
Automatic advance order (AAO) was
originally designed to address the problem of effectively meeting demand for rare and expensive
items which, on the one hand,should be in the stock to complete the range
and, on the other hand, should be present in single-piece quantity to
minimize unsalable stock.
For a plotter worth ten thousand dollars, the AO is a good and graceful
technical solution to the efficient sales issue of meeting all demand with minimum inventory.
It is good and effective to the point that other products became
available for AAO between shops. There is none at one shop – ok, the customer of the website will
make an advance order anyway as he fills his basket and collect his fully arranged purchase the next
day (any missing goods will be moved from another shop at night).
And it all appeared so nice and
great that attention to each shop’s assortment quality naturally decreased. Why worry about it? Sold
out at one shop – they will ship it over from another. Fast.
Problems were quick to appear:
- more inter-depot transfers meant greater costs (as customers do not pay for them) and more dead work for warehouse staff
- poorer assortment affected sales (in fact it’s not that they dropped, but that they grew slower than they should have). Firstly, advance order is unsuitable for those customers who need goods here and now rather than tomorrow and not the next day (while in Moscow the same product is offered by a hundred of other vendors at about the same price and distance), and, secondly, the incoming customers are unlikely to understand the details of an individual seller’s operations (with lots of others around). No goods ready "here and now" – all right, we go the next website on the Yandex.Market list.
Thus, from an efficient solution to the problem of selling rare
and expensive items, automatic advance order has turned into a means of plugging up the symptoms of
a serious problem consisting in poor assortment and crappy management in general.
And, in a
sense, even as a catalyst that aggravates the problem.
And now – attention, please! Note the specific brain perversion
(BP), against which the true causes of the difficulties in bringing Jidoka home to the average Homo
Sapiens (AHS) will stand out a mile.
We appeal to the responsible employees of a company that has
become dependent on perverted AAO use with our message that there is really a serious problem that
causes a great waste of money. It has to be solved. And there is no other means of final solution
than to renounce AAO for the entire range of goods and to use it only for the original super
expensive and rare items.
The answer will be, ‘No! We really use it! How are we going to work
without it!??’
An attentive reader would ask: why don’t we write the company
name here? Unlike in many other texts. The answer is as the follows: this specific problem (as well
as the illustrated response) generally refers to all our customers who use AAO for their full range
of products.
Man is feeble.
But, as Stalin said — "I have no other writers for you."
And now it is time for positive examples.
Here is the "Ruki Iz Plech" ("Handy Men") laptop repair shop
Russia’s largest post-warranty service center.
The entire repair business process is divided into
stages, of which the most complex and potentially problematic ones – diagnosis, repair proper, and
testing – are supervised by a service engineer.
In older days (when the trees were so big) that
would produce a huge backlog that resulted in slow repair and massive customer frustration with all
the entailments.
The "Handy Men" managed to overcome the brain perversion of the average Homo
Sapiens (AHS BP) by limiting the number of orders being processed by a service engineer at a time.
If the limit is reached at any stage, Ultimate IEM will block the distribution of orders to this
service engineer until he clears up his backlog. The inflow of orders will be restricted
accordingly.
If an executed order is returned for warranty repair (i.e., a customer has a
warranty claim in respect of a previously repaired item), the laptop is sent back to the author of
the improper repair. And the unlucky fellow will automatically get no new orders until he closes the
warranty case, regardless of the number of other orders at the repair stages of. That creates
maximum motivation for him, on the one hand, to address the warranty case as soon as possible and,
on the other, work better to prevent such claims in the future.
How can we describe the AHS BP that was overcome in this
case?
The Handy Men had a choice:
– either to sustain the level of quality by blocking new
orders to temporarily reduce the inflow (thus, theoretically, reducing the potential profit)
– or
to take up all orders, piling up backlogs and hoping that everything would resolve and settle down
somehow (and thus, hoping not to lose a penny of the potential profit).
It is clear that an AHS always chooses the second option. The
result is well known: Take any more or less popular service facility and search the Internet for
reviews. Their profit, expected to be huge enormous in theory, is in fact disappointing to most of
the AHS sub-species.
And the Handy Men also took time to pluck up their courage and switch to the
right track under this long beneficial outside influence.
Nevertheless, the results are impressive.
As a
result of the many months’ painful process of overcoming the AHS BPs, sales increased significantly
(by tens of percentage points; it not possible to determine the impact of this innovation more
precisely because it took long to transpire while the business underwent many other changes and its
volume multiplied).
Customer loyalty varied from the mid-market (or statistically invisible)
figure to the results of an independent poll with 71.4% respondents rating the quality of the
company’s service at the maximum of five points.
If there is someone among our readers who has to
do with the service business, he or she will not willingly believe us. Their skepticism is easy to
understand – but read reviews on the Net.
And now – attention, please! A question from the TV viewers’
community to the Intellectual Roulette players.
Andrew Belyaev, the Handy Men’s technical
director, believes that the above innovation exemplifies the correct practical application of
Jidoka.
Is Andrew right?
Click on your answer.
The answer depends on the accurate wording
of the question.
If we look at the above situation as (a) a still snapshot and (b) as an example
use of the Jidoka principle taken individually, – then we can agree with Andrew.
But as (a)
Jidoka is not an independent concept, but rather an important element of a holistic manufacturing
philosophy of Toyota Co. (which we have already described in detail) and (b) any practically applicable philosophy is dialectical and thus all phenomena
must be considered in their development, Andrew has missed something.
In particular, he has
disregarded kaizen, another fundamental principle of TPS that stands for continuous improvement.
Which, in relation to our situation, dictates constant reduction of the limit on the number of orders
at each stage. The system should ideally evolve into a conveyer assembly line not divided into fixed
stages at all.
Yes, it is not easy. But it is clear where to go. Best regards to Andrey.