Taiichi Ohno built Toyota’s production system. His training method was a literally chalk circle on the factory floor. He’d put a new manager inside it and tell them to stand there and watch! 8 hours No phone No notebook Just watch After an hour they’d come back saying they’d... figured out the problem. Ohno would send them back. “Keep watching.” By hour 3 they’d notice the worker reaching awkwardly for a part. By hour 7, the pause before every weld because the operator was waiting on the guy behind him. None of that shows up in a report. Reports compress 8 hours into just a number. The number says output is 94% of target. It doesn’t say why the guy is standing on his tiptoes. Most executives have never watched their own operation for 8+ hours. They’ve read a 1000+ dashboards. Those are not the same thing. By the time it reaches you, it’s just a bar chart. On a bar chart, everything looks pretty fine. The only way out is to go sit in the circle. Sit there until you notice something that isn’t in the summary or bullet points. Because the summary is always wrong in exactly the places that matter.show more

the magic was not in the absence of tools, but in making someone confront the gap between what they think is happening and what actually is

Great observation, it's all about finding the pain points and trying your best to find the optimal way to solve

Reminds me of a book my grandma read to me by Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr about growing up in a lively household of 12 children raised by efficiency-expert parents, called "Cheaper by the Dozen"

@stringshike thanks for sharing the book, Elias

Powerful reminder of genchi genbutsu. Standing in Ohno’s chalk circle forces you to see the real waste that dashboards hide. Most leaders never do this — and it shows. Great share, Sufyan.

That’s correct, it helps to understand the operations in real time.

what is a chalk circle or Ohno circle?

As an ME student applying for an internship my dad made me watch TPS and Continuous Quality Improvement tapes.

My first exposure to TPS came from my product leader back in 2018, and it stuck

What a legend.. Taiichi Ohno was like the Elon of Production Engineering .. Any shop, even small local ones, can benefit from the Toyota P/S. It’s engineering beauty in its simplicity and attention to details

Seeing small businesses apply Taiichi Ohno’s ideas proves simplicity beats scale every time

The lesson sits in being forced to stand still long enough to notice

That’s correct, observe, and keep Improving

There's an old Balkan anecdote: man from the Balkans met a Japanese and admiring Japanese efficiency asked how are Japan people so smart? Japanese replied: "not so much really, out of ten people 9 are quite stupid, but that one smart always manage over them. And you Balkans...

One disciplined system can outperform many scattered efforts

The best move is to stop talking and just observe

So true, Awa, its all about observing and taking action

Real insight comes from watching, not dashboards

I can’t disagree, Brett. That’s exactly why I believe a bootstrapped founder often understands the business far better than someone analyzing it from a dashboard. making real decisions

Thanks. This is a great excerpt on the TPS, Lean Manufacturing and "The Machine That Changed the World."

Thanks, Joe. I’ve been fortunate to visit Japan, and I’m eager to return. What stands out most is its culture of continuous improvement and deep respect for people. TPS is a mindset, everyone, from frontline workers to executives, is expected to identify problems & suggest better ways of working

Data shows what, observation shows why

love this, why is the main part to understand

Lean + Six Sigma = TPS Toyota Production System and it is still used globally.

Still wild, William, how principles from one factory floor became a global operating playbook

Deming

Detail matters but now Toyota is delaying electrification, which could lead to its downfall

You really don't know the truth about why Japan embraced its quality philosophy.

I’ll read the book. Thanks for sharing, Michel.

A great thing about the the TPS is the rigor in changing it. A new manager has to jump through hoops and prove the change.

Spreadsheets will never tell the truth

Totally agree, spreadsheets are too polished to understand everything

Great point!

Gemba-ism. Management by watching and walking around

Practice, everything in real time!

I spent plenty of time watching one process to catch the nuances of that process and identify waste

Go to the gemba

great insight

Appreciate it, it's all about observing and taking action

this is amazing

Does anyone understand that all these great production ideas are the bed rock foundations for today's new age robots, which we desist btw...?

Excellent

great tips

Direct contact is extremely important

Yeah Yogi said something like, You can observe a lot by looking.

Yep as are many of the modern traders. They know charts but not the information that makes the charts.

Allan, I learned, nothing replaces the clarity you get from Management by Walking Around

Yes sir, I totally agree.

great share

Thanks for dropping by

Used to be called Management by Walking Around

Don, sometimes I think, how a simple habit like walking the floor became a system at scale

Powerful, powerful stuff

@pursue365 I had the privilege to take people on a tour of Toyota factories in Japan with Ritsuo Shingo. Ritsuo’s father Shigeo Shingo worked with Taiichi Ohno. The concepts are critical. The power of humility to observe and respect the individual is the key driver to next steps.

Amen

As a Big 4 Consultant I would have coffee with guys doing real work. They knew of problems and had ideas which senior mngt ignored. Those ideas gained value when included in our report accompanied by a stonking huge invoice. Johnny Walker's sub hunting ideas were ridiculed.