Conditions for survival in the manufacturing industry in VUCA era
Satoru Murakami
CEO Goal-System consultants Inc.,
Responding to the unknown is the key to innovation
Last time, I introduced the process in which Toyota's "three realism (Sangenism)" evolved into the LAMDA cycle, and lean development and evolution.
Let's consider the case where the uncertainty increases further this time, we will call such a state "Ignorance". In an unknown state, it is unknown whether there is a risk, what kind of problem it is, what factors and conditions are involved, and how to formulate the problem (framing) is not determined. In this case, even if you blindly repeat the hypothesis verification, the probability of reaching the correct answer is not high. It's like looking for a fish in the vast Pacific Ocean or a single needle in a haystack, and dark efforts don't give good results.
Therefore, in order to deal with the unknown, a completely different method, that is, "innovation" is required. What does it take to generate innovation, the point of creative thinking that creates innovation is not to be "creative" like a momentary flash, but to first see the "essence of things". In the dissertation "Standing on the shoulders of giants", which is the teaching of Dr. Goldratt, this is the "Basic Concept".
Next, in order to solve (handle) the essence, it is required to borrow ideas from different industries and others who are not directly related, convert them to a specific environment, and apply them. Dr. Goldratt introduced that he developed the TOC in response to changes in the environment by analyzing the mechanism constructed by Henry Ford and Taiichi Ohno, but this is the essence and analogy of innovation.
If you look up the word "Analogy" in a dictionary, it is translated as "analogy / analogy", but the point is "understand by parable" and "find a similar structure between A and B, and the idea of A". Borrow and apply to B ".
In other words, the essence of "creation" is not to come up with new ideas from nothing, but to "borrow ideas from other areas". "Borrowing an idea" is often regarded as negative, such as "imitation" or "pakuru", but as I have introduced, it is a genius such as Mr. Taiichi Ohno and Dr. Goldratt. However, it is a fact that I borrow ideas from other areas and combine them.
Mr. Ohno, who developed TPS, learned the essence of supplying as much as needed when needed from the product replenishment method of supermarkets and borrowed it to the just-in-time method. The work of extracting "essence)" and embodying ideas through analogical thinking is extremely important. But one thing to keep in mind is that this analogical thinking is by no means predicting or predicting the future. Analogical thinking is to grasp what we want to achieve and needs at this moment, raise the level of abstraction, and get hints from the essence.
In that sense, even if there are operations to raise or lower the level of abstraction, I think that the spirit of the three-actualism of actually learning from the present is maintained.
