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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to analyze Toyota's management directed kaizen activities named Jishuken. Currently, there are many variations in understanding how Toyota develops its managers to support daily kaizen, especially when Toyota managers have different levels of understanding of Toyota production system (TPS) and skills essential in applying TPS. Design/methodology/approach -This paper will study Toyota's Jishuken process in the context of strengthening TPS and analyze both the technical and management aspects of Toyota's Jishuken process. Findings -When integrated into plant-wide long-term continuous improvement, Jishukens can be extremely effective at developing management's ability to conduct and to teach others to conduct daily kaizen and problem solving. This paper shows how Jishukens function within the TPS system to continuously improve managers' understanding of TPS both for their own concrete problem solving and to support manager's roles in communicating, coaching and teaching problem solving to production workers. Originality/value -Most attempts to imitate Toyota fail because techniques are adopted piecemeal with little understanding of why they exist or what kind of organizational culture is needed to keep them alive. Jishuken serves as an example of a technique which is successful only when embedded within the right organizational culture.

Purpose -True lean transformation has proved notoriously difficult for non-Toyota companies. One hypothesis is excessive focus on tools/techniques without building the necessary organizational culture. However, empirical evidence is not available to confirm (or refute) this hypothesis. The complex question of the relationship between an organization's culture and its ability to implement lean is a long-term effort. As a first step, the purpose of this paper is to offer the results of a survey conducted to discover the relative (in)consistency of lean cultures in terms of values held explicitly. Design/methodology/approach -A survey tool was developed to compare what employees of lean (or attempting to be lean) organizations say explicitly about what their culture values. The Toyota Way, considered by Toyota as guiding its values, was used as the basis to develop the survey which was administered to individuals in several different organizations. Findings -A higher degree of lean implementation in a company was assumed to show more consistent organizational values (in explicit form). However, the responses varied even from the company considered a leader in lean implementation. Though not conclusive, these preliminary findings suggest that the relationship between cultural type, explicit values and successful lean practice should be examined further. Originality/value -No empirical studies have investigated the role of culture in success with lean transformations. This paper presents an initial attempt at addressing that issue with a tool developed to evaluate what an organization's culture says its values are, in terms of what is important for lean implementation.

Employee suggestion systems are often used as a way to improve participation from members of the organization to help solve problems that cannot be solved through traditional organizational practices. In the government sector, employee involvement programs are the most difficult to implement mainly because management regularly changes with new administration and these changes bring about many short‐term management practices and systems. Toyota's approach to employee suggestion programs has been widely benchmarked and studied, yet there is little research to show that these practices can be applied or are successful in the public sector. This work uses a statistical data‐mining technique to compare which types of human resource management practices are prevalent in employee suggestion programs at Toyota and a target government organization. This work shows that Toyota emphasizes organization‐centered factors to stimulate employee participation in solving small problems that relate to an employee's job. On the contrary, government organizations tend to emphasize employee factors that make conditions right for employees to make larger improvements in their jobs that lead to improvements outside their work areas. Findings suggest that Toyota's approach to employee suggestion programs is not a way to weaken management's obligation to perform problem solving, but instead is another medium to highlight problems that do not require management's intervention. These new insights and others provide an increased understanding of employee suggestion programs in the public sector that are unique to manufacturing. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to analyze Toyota's production levelling process in an attempt to understand the various social and technical factors required to produce to a changing market. Unfortunately, most outsiders who explore production levelling do not realize that it involves various departments outside of manufacturing. Consequently, due to the dynamic nature of production levelling many unintended social and management factors between departments makes cooperation difficult. Design/methodology/approach -This paper conducts a case study at one of Toyota's automobile plants to examine the level of departmental and social integration that is applied when implementing production levelling. Based on observations, the problems of production levelling are analyzed and, accordingly, possible solutions are explored. Findings -The findings of this work show that Toyota achieves production levelling because it is viewed as a company-wide activity that cuts across many departments in promoting manufacturing consistency. Production levelling criteria include both the design and manufacturing aspects which brings evidence that manufacturing is limited in its ability to eliminate and reduce market fluctuation. The work also illustrates that Toyota reinforces departmental cooperation through its human resources policies, and many other unique management mechanisms. Originality/value -The paper provides new insight on how Toyota achieves production levelling by considering a more holistic and social-technical approach. In particular, interdepartmental activities are emphasized in achieving company-wide goals that impact how departments agree to operate.