Author : Skon Lapamnuaypol, PMP
One of the popular topics in Project Management is how to apply Lean concepts to projects, so-called “Lean Project Management”. In the Information Technology (IT) industry there are quite a number of methodologies like Agile Project Management and Extreme Programming, which are well-known and accepted by the industry. When talking about “Lean”, personally I always gratefully think back of the days I experienced Lean concepts and an aligned working culture while managing IT projects in Toyota Manufacturing (Thailand). Toyota Production System (TPS) is an origin of the Lean Manufacturing Idea, which was later adopted by other industries including IT, Financial and Services. In this article, I would like to share my personal experiences that I gained on the projects I managed for Toyota Motor Thailand.
One of the big programs of Toyota Manufacturing in Thailand was IMV, which stands for “International Multi Vehicle”. IMV aimed to establish Toyota Manufacturing in Thailand as one of the assembly plants for the region.
The day I was introduced to the program I sat with my team in the same room with other vendors who were implementing other projects under the IMV Program. We were outside vendors working on projects for Toyota Thailand. On the front door of the room we were sitting it said “IMV Room”. Near the IMV Room there was another room who the label “OBEYA” on its front door. By searching Google, I learned that “OBEYA” means “War Room”. The “OBEYA” is the place where all parties who are involved in the programs or projects come together in order to speed up communication and shorten the decision-making process. Once I understood the meaning I realized that our “IMV Room” was also “OBEYA”. Years later, after self-study of TPS, I understood that this is the technique to eliminate “waste” in the process. As an example, if a need for decision-making surfaces, the team comes together in OBEYA to immediately formulate the resolution rather than writing emails and waiting for responses from recipients. Or even worse if the message was not clear and needed multiple rounds of email sending and receiving. So, working in the same location significantly improves the communication.
Inside the “IMV Room” or “IMV OBEYA” were visual charts, diagrams, progress status reports, milestones on the walls. One of the charts I was always very impressed with is a big Microsoft Project Gantt chart. It was printed on multiple A3 pages and stuck together on the wall. In a simple way pins were used to track the current status date and the actual status on the task bar. A thread was used among the pins to represent the “Progress Line”. The figure below demonstrates how this idea works, where the yellow line represents the thread that was tied among the pins.
If I was asked in the old days to weekly update the project schedule and status on the wall, I would print the schedule with the progress line generated from the scheduling software on multiple A3 papers and would have stuck them on the wall. Yet printing and arranging multiple large paper pages needs time and effort to make it look good.
By using the Pins and Thread technique, the progress line can be easily adjusted by moving the pin to the updated location on the chart. This is another example of eliminating non-productive work or waste from day-to-day project management. There were multiple small things or technique to simplify work, which I realize several years later after reading and trying to understand the TPS concept.
On a project level, a vendor was requested to produce the pre-defined weekly status report, which was fit into a single A3 page. On the report, schedules and even delaying signals could be seen with minimal reviewing effort. I am unfortunately not able to show the sample status report in this article as it is Toyota’s proprietary content. The report was put on top of the previous report on the wall by Pin or Black Clip.
Concepts like “OBEYA”, visual charts, diagrams or reports on the wall help enable the visibility of the project status, details and information. This is very different from projects that I was involved with for other clients or other industries, of which some of them feel that putting paper on the wall is a cumbersome task or possibly just the way to proudly display your work in progress.
I really realized the value of the different concepts when my team was implementing a “production monitoring system” project for the assembly line. There is a concept called “Jidoka”. Which refers to automation with a human touch. See the toyota-global.com website if you want to read more about this. Visual control is another idea that goes together with the “Jidoka” idea. When a problem in the production line arises, the electric or digital board (called “Andon”) will raise an alarm to allow operators to immediately identify the problem. The visual control concept is the idea of putting charts, diagrams and reports on the wall to allow project team to see project problems without going into very detailed information. TPS not only manages operational excellence in Toyota’s assembly plants. The TPS concepts are also extended to suppliers and dealers. This makes the entire supply and demand chain processes very effective and efficient.
Toyota have not applied every TPS concept or technique into their IT project methodology. For example, visual control concepts have been applied without the “Jidoka” idea in the same manner as the two work together in the assembly line. Also, the Just-in-Time (JIT) concept is not applied into their project management methodology, because JIT is more suitable for an operations process and less for an IT project.
The key learning that I would like to share with my good experiences in executing IT projects for Toyota is that TPS or the concept of Lean is their culture. Every working process in an IT project has been aligned with Toyota’s working philosophy and concepts. For people outside the organization it’s difficult to see and understand how they apply TPS or Lean concepts into their project management methodology. To do like Toyota may require a long journey to establish the Lean team’s working culture. This doesn’t mean however that the “Lean Project Management” concept outside Toyota is not an efficient way to manage the project. It all depends on the environment, culture and internal/external factors.
Finally, I feel that I have been very lucky to have a chance to run projects in Toyota. It has greatly helped me to understand the heart of Lean Manufacturing, even if not as detailed as an automotive engineer does. I am very impressed with the culture and way of working in Toyota. However, this is my personal opinion based on my experiences, self-learning on TPS and my own interpretation. Personally, I believe that it is a big challenge to adopt this concept into another organization or project. It doesn’t surprise me that there is literature about a western automotive factory that failed to adopt TPS because of the reason that the TPS concept couldn’t be seamlessly integrated into to their culture. Still, “Lean” project management concepts are still good options. You just need to find the right way to introduce it into your organization or project.
In you are interested to read more about the philosophy and concepts of TPS, you may search and read from Toyota’s website.
Note: Definition of Crashing and Fast Tracking are excerpted from PMBOK 5th edition.
Skon Lapamnuaypol is a PMP certified project manager with a Bachelor degree in Computer Science from Chiang Mai University. He has proven 20 years
experiences in IT industry, which includes 14 years’ experience managing IT Implementation Projects in Banking, Manufacturing and Retail Industries. On Technology area, Skon has strong knowledge and background on Software Engineering, Software Development and System Integration.