Frank Michael Kraft's Blog

As promised I want to finish the discussion about the Toyota Production System (TPS) and knowledge work with some reflections about goal-driven and waste elimination.

One goal of the TPS is to eliminate waste – i.e. to eliminate materials, tools and activities that are not needed for the production of the end product. This in itself is goal-driven, because waste is defined as not contributing to the goal. I think this is a good principle in general. But there is a major difference between producing cars and knowledge work.

As we already discussed, the production of a car is completely pre-planned and the process is repetitive. Therefore the process is planned by different people than those that execute it. As we have discussed in knowledge work the same people that execute the process are those that plan the process – at least they work together in small teams. And the knowledge work processes are often not repetitive and often not predictable. There is some repetition and some predictability, but the degree of it is much less as in car manufacturing. Therefore it is clear, that it is the task of the knowledge worker himself to eliminate waste. This is done by re-evaluating priorities of sub goals in relation to a goal or by withdrawing or postponing sub goals. It is not done by a process designer that does it for the knowledge worker.

Also there is a danger in knowledge work about eliminating waste. It is not possible a priori to judge what is waste and what not. Knowledge work is creative work. This also means that experiments must be made and the outcome of the experiments is unknown at the start. Creative minds need freedom to experiment and an atmosphere that primarily eliminates waste can be very counterproductive in this environment. Imagine a soccer match that is only optimized towards eliminating waste. Nobody takes any effort, if the success is not guaranteed. That is boring and that is the sure road to losing the match. If you have seen the match Germany – England you might remember the first goal. Miroslav Klose delivered a brave sprinting fight against the english defense before he scored the first goal. He did not know in advance that he would score. He had to fight for it, even if the result was unpredictable. Only he was able to decide in this situation, if it was worth a try or not.

Ok – I admit the coach does also decide. He does knowledge work on a different level. It is his responsibility to judge if a player does not or is not able to contribute towards the goal of the match and exchange players. The players obviously are not completely autonomous. The team only works as a team if the players fulfill their role within the team. This is in part predictable.

I don’t have all the answers in this discussion and I am also interested in your opinion. Today I only want to make clear that in knowledge work eliminating waste can be dangerous while it is still desirable to a degree and eliminating waste itself is knowledge work because it needs situational judgments and many of the decisions must be done by the knowledge workers themselves.

I have argued that the Toyota Production System (TPS) and knowledge work do not fit.

One aspect of the TPS is tact. Production lines are synchronized by using tact. There is a temptation to try to synchronize knowledge work by tact as well. I do not know how many out there try to do this, but I know of at least two companies.

Nobody is against recurring meetings to synchronize tasks and progress. This is no new invention and certainly not rocket science. We also can discuss SCRUM. But today I want to point out the limitations and difficulties with trying to synchronize knowledge work by tact.

There is a concept – I see it as a law of nature – called irreducible complexity. It means, that there is a minimum complexity for a system to be functional that cannot be reduced without harm. For example a car engine – if there is but one part missing, the engine very probably is not functional. The car engine must be absolutely complete before it is functional. It does not make any sense to assemble an engine into a car, if the engine is not absolutely complete or perfectly functional. In car assembly the “wedding” – i.e. the moment when the engine is assembled into the chassis, follows a strict tact. Thereby the chassis and the engine together become the car. So the engine line and the chassis line are synchronized by this tact.

What happens, if due to any small unpredicted deviation the engine can’t reach the “wedding” in time? The chassis line must be stopped as well. There is no other way. So the whole system works well as long as all work complies with the predicted times and if the work is executed completely perfect.

It becomes clear now, why knowledge work does not fit into this pattern. Knowledge work has many unpredictable components, be it the needed preconditions, the workitems themselves, their duration and their deviation from the expected duration. Imposing tact over knowledge work often results in odd behavior like delivering a half-baked document or installing a half-finished software patch. In Germany we say: “Verschlimmbessern”. This means making it worse by trying to make it better. This is especially the case, if the work does not create a new work result from scratch, but does modify an existing work result – which in my opinion is the main case.

Does this mean I argue for not synchronizing at all or to not plan at all? No! This is far from true. I only argue that the type of synchronizing and planning must respect the laws of nature that we find in knowledge work. This relieves the knowledge worker from the odd feeling and produces more reliable results for the project or management.

There is a trend in Business Process Management towards Lean. If we think of Lean, then we also think about the Toyota Production System, or TPS. The TPS is about production flow – producing with the same tact as the customer buys, eliminating waste, process synchronization, process standardization and reducing the error rate. The TPS has been very successful; therefore there is a temptation to try to utilize it in the area of business processes. I am not against it. But when we come to knowledge work, I am against it. It just won’t work.

Of course, eliminating waste is a good thing. But how do we eliminate waste? Can we eliminate waste by standardizing processes and disallow everything else in knowledge work? No! If this was so, then what would knowledge work be all about? It is about making intelligent and informed decisions.

Toyota obviously produces cars. I once specified a production information system for a car manufacturer for a new car plant in the Far East. It was not Toyota. I’m only saying this, that you believe me that I know how cars are produced.

It is absolutely clear, that the persons, that plan the production process in a car plant and the persons that execute it, are different persons. There are even several levels of planning. For example the production plant layout must be planned. The production flow must be planned – i.e. which tact times will be executed for each production line. The production program must be planned – i.e. which cars are produced when and in which sequence. And the production supply must be planned – i.e. which parts are delivered to which assembly line – in which sequence. All this is planned by persons that are different persons than the person that executes the production.

The challenge for the planning is to make it as predictable as possible. It is using a stopwatch to determine the average duration of a work unit, and the statistical deviation. It is predicting the market demand as good as possible. It is exploding the whole bill of material for a car that is planned to be produced. It is synchronizing processes by imposing tact on the assembly lines.

Now imagine someone using a stopwatch to determine how long you need to read a page of a document. Of course this is an extreme example, but this ridiculous situation makes it clear, why the TPS can’t work for knowledge work. Also there is no bill of material for knowledge work. If we want to produce a car we know which components we need, and which parts for the components. We already know which suppliers will give us which component. That is because the car design is finished before the production planning even starts. In knowledge work, the design decisions are done together with the work. There is no a priori bill of material.

These are fundamental differences between discrete manufacturing, especially line production and knowledge work. We should not use fins for mountain climbing because they have proven successful in the sea.

In the next post I will discuss why tact does contradict irreducible complexity – a law of nature that we often find in knowledge work – and how goal driven and reducing waste relate to each other.