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At TAKT we are students and consultants of lean in its purest form. As developed over more than 50 years within Toyota Motor Corporation.

We respect and pay tribute to the teachings of Kichiro Toyoda, Taichi Ohno, Shigeo Shingo, Masaaki Imai and their students.

No compromises, simply lean: the TAKT Way.

Long term vision:

World class companies work continuously on their long term goals. The entire organization aims to be succesful, also 50 years from now. Even if it is at the expense of short term profits.
These companies create value for their community, for their customers and for their team members.

Heijunka:

Heijunka is balancing the workload. If work is led into the system unevenly (mura), the team members get stressed (muri). They continuously need to change their pace. That happens when we respond entirely to variable customer demand. Heijunka helps us preventing that. For instance by making every product every day.

Standardized work:

Standardized work is the foundation for continuous improvement.
As long as your work has not been standardized, it is impossible to improve it. Every improvement will only add an extra way of doing things: more variation, which does not necessarily lead to a better overall performance.
Work is standardized when it is described precisely in a standardized work chart and a work element sheet.

Visual management:

Everything ought to be visible:

  • How good or bad the production runs: Problems can only be solved, when they are visible.
  • If TAKT time is being met: If not, there must be a problem, which needs to be solved.
  • If inventory is building up: Apparantly the different processes are not well tuned, or a problem is occurring in the downstream process.
  • How results are being made in continuous improvement projects,

5S is the key method to achieve visual management.

5S:

5s model

seiri: sort
seiton: set
seison: shine
seiketsu: standardize
shitsuke: sustain

JIT:

JIT (Just in Time) is possible through

Flow:

Work flows when it is organized in such a way that it is being processed all the time. From the moment it enters a workstation, to the moment it leaves it, people are continuously adding value. Work is not lying idle, and it is not being moved unnessecarily or being overprocessed. Flow can only be achieved when the waste or muda is eliminated from the processes.

Muda:

Achieving flow through the elimination of all waste or muda:

  • overproduction
    overproduction
  • overprocessing
    overprocessing
  • defects and defective products
    defects and defective products
  • waiting
    waiting
  • inventory
    inventory
  • transportation
    transportation
  • movement
    movement
  • talent
    talent

Pull:

The pull principle means that customers get exactly what they need when they need it at the quality level they require. Not only external customers, but also all the internal customers in the valuestream get what they need, when they need it.

SMED:

SMED means Single Minute Exchange of Dies. It is a standardized method to reduce change-over times of machines or installations. Change-over time is the time elapsing between the last product of a run and the first product of a new run. The shorter, the better.

Jidoka:

Jidoka is the invention that provided the Toyota family with the capital to set up an automobile industry. Jidoka means: stop as soon as something goes wrong en prevent it from happening again. So we bring quality into the process.

Empowered teams:

Empowered teams are teams able to and entitled to do what is needed to do all the work required and to solve the problems that may occur. To have empowered teams, we need to invest in our people, not only in our products, services and processes. The team is responsible for the end result. It is the end-to-end process which counts. In fact, if one individual outperforms the rest, that may not be beneficial for the total end-to-end performance or even be detrimental.

Kai Zen:

The standard Kai Zen approach is the key of the TAKT Way. You can obtain great process improvements and cost reduction, but what really matters is that your empowered teams dispose of the capacity to continuously solve problems and improve the process. The Kai Zen process consists of three main stages:

Genchi Genbutsu

  • We perceive a problem: rubbish, inventory, targets not being met, defects, rework, failure demand... A team member pulling the ANDON cord and stopping the production line.
  • We go straight to genchi, de exact place where the problems occurs (this is mostly in gemba; on the shopfloor). We look at the situation and evaluate the situation right there.
  • We check the genbutsu: materials and tools..
  • We take temporary countermeasures.
  • We analyse the problem.

Nemawashi

  • We consider the problem carefully and seek consensus on the most important root cause.
  • We think of a solution to solve the root cause (PLAN)
  • We implement the solution (DO)
  • We test the solution (CHECK)
  • We adjust the solution (ADJUST)
  • We communicate the results, so every one knows the new standard.

Kai Zen and Hansei

  • We learn from the process and make sure that learnings are transmitted to the rest of the teammembers. Sometimes even to the rest of the organization.

Letting value flow:

A company going the TAKT Way has a simple goal: to deliver

Quality - products & services of the quality required by the client, with no need for rework.
Costs - produced at the lowest possible cost.
Delivery - with the shortest possible leadtimes, so delivery can be at any time requiered by the customer.

This goal drives waste out of the processes, while it enhances both safety and environment: it lets value flow.