Apply Toyota Business Practice (TBP)on new services
Toyota business practice is a well-known methodology to improve processes or quality in the factory side and it is extended to the nonfactory domain recently. Regards to TBP, you can refer to the following picture. TBP is usually used to improve the current process and it is not common to see cases regarding the application of TBP on a whole new business, product or service. I’d like to introduce how I use TBP to initiate a new service to solve a problem with the sales team. I separate the TBP topic into two articles and this one introduces the steps before analyzing the root cause.
Clarify the problem
The TBP is an 8-step methodology that contains PDCA spirits in the process. Most of the steps belong to the Plan stage in the PDCA cycle, and that is a problem I think we can improve, I will put it to the next article. Now, to begin with, a step called to clarify the problem. Here is my case, I fount the problem that the team has trouble handling data and providing reports on time. In this step, you need to observe the process on-site and clarify the problem. The pain point leads to significant cost on time and resources, and that is the point we want to solve.
Break down the problem
Then I broke down the problem by a daily process, we can understand the key person and key task in this process hence to find the possible points lead to the problem. We try to solve only part of the problem in a task, the improving process is a nonstop cycle, the ideal situation is built step by step, little by little.
Set a target
Normally, there might be indicators to evaluate the project if the case is current, and it is easy to set a target of TBP on top of the original indicators. But what if we are on the way to building a new service or a new product? How can we set a target for applying TBP in our project? We can start with the benefits of the new service or new product will bring to us. For example, in my case, I believe a new solution to the sales team could help them reduce their data preparing time and increase data accuracy, then I can use related indicators as targets for my project.
To set a target and design the system to evaluate the effort is relatively important in the whole TBP cycle. A target drives people forward and an evaluation system tunes the method we use to achieve the target. We are still in the PDCA plan stage, the do stage will come out in the next article, it will help you a lot to push the plan touche the ground.
