Beyond the Giants (26)

Conditions for survival in the manufacturing industry in VUCA era

Satoru Murakami

CEO Goal-System consultants Inc.,

Further evolution of "three realism"（Sangenism）, from "LAMDA cycle" to "lean development"

I introduced the "three realism" which should be said to be the origin of Toyota's improvement in several times, and last time I talked about that "three realism" will result in the LAMDA cycle. This week, let's take a look at how the LAMDA cycle has evolved more by applying it to an "uncertain environment."

I explained that the essence of the LAMDA cycle is to observe reality extremely coldly and "lean development" is the ultimate development of this idea type. Events with high uncertainty are difficult to handle as they are, so the trial and error by the LAMDA cycle is rotated in a quick cycle and the hypothesis is verified at high speed.

On top of that, when the certainty has increased to some extent, an execution plan is created, "TOC flow solution" is applied, and the flow is controlled at the fastest speed.　　　　By combining these two, it is possible to optimally control the uncertainty with different characteristics, and as a result, it is based on the idea that the shortest flow can be created.

This is faithful to Mr. Ohno's teaching, which is to thoroughly use the Sangen principle.　　Let's take product development as an example.In the conventional product development method, it was common to first determine the product specifications and then determine the final output.

This is not different from existing models like derivative development, and can be applied without problems if it can be developed only with known knowledge.However, if there are many new elements to be developed and the knowledge gap is large, unexpected problems and issues may occur frequently and return to the initial stage of development.　　　In short, there is a big risk due to the uncertainty of unknown, and even if a flow solution such as TOC is applied in such a state, it cannot be fully covered by full kit and buffer management, and the original plan Will go bankrupt.

On the other hand, in lean development, as explained, the product development stage is divided into two according to the degree of uncertainty, and the stage where the initial uncertainty is large is called the "set-based stage".In the initial stage of development, when the knowledge gap is large and the uncertainty is high, the point is to acquire a lot of knowledge in a short time (short cycle) as the development progresses.

In other words, instead of focusing on keeping the schedule, we will focus on changing the uncertainty into certainty (knowledge) and increasing the feasibility while dealing well with the "uncertainty (knowledge gap)".Then, when the knowledge gap in the latter half of development is filled and the type of uncertainty changes to "variation", scheduling using buffer management is performed as the "detailed design stage".

If the concept of lean development is expressed in a TOC manner, the bottleneck (constraint) for proceeding in the shortest schedule can be regarded as a "knowledge gap". And what should be changed is the conventional way of thinking, that is, the way of thinking in order to keep the delivery date even if there is uncertainty.

What we should aim for is the idea of ​​things (set base) to reduce uncertainty with wisdom and create new things in a shorter period of time.

Considering this in terms of TOC, the change in the preconditions in this lean development is a way of thinking that the Constraint has shifted from the physical one to the "ambiguous" one called the "knowledge gap". The origin of TOC developed by Dr. Goldratt is the idea of ​​pragmatic things. Instead of pursuing the ideal theory from the beginning, he thinks of "the best method based on constraints" such as "what to do so that the flow is not disturbed even if there are fluctuations".

Therefore, in a changing environment, the assumptions of the environmental conditions claimed by TOC have changed drastically, and in situations where the assumptions cannot be applied, the constraints are naturally changing, so it is self-evident that the handling method will change. If we ignore the reality of changing constraints and try to apply the method system by force, it is clear that even TOC will be transformed into something that cannot be used.

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