getAbstract summary The Toyota Kata Practice Guide

This weeks' free getAbstract summary is The Toyota Kata Practice Guide by Mike Rother

There is much to admire about the Japanese approach to manufacturing.

My grandfather always used to say that the Japanese were very good at working out how British manufacturers made things and then devising ways to make the same sort of product smaller and cheaper.

UK manufacturers struggled to compete with the super-efficient Japanese manufacturers for decades and as Japanese quality improved the problems only got worse for the British.

Now it seems that the Japanese advantage was their approach to work place learning. In the UK employers often see the training of employees as a something a one-off activity that is done at the start of employment and only repeated if the employee falls short of the required performance standard.

In Japan the approach is quite different. Japanese employers and their employees are likely to see training as an on-going process that is aimed, not at remedying problems but, achieving continuous improvement.

This approach to working and learning is a topic that Mike Rother has been investigating for a number of years. In 2009 he published his first examination of the approach taken at Toyota. Now he has published a practical guide that records how people used his first book to create continuous improvement in their own organisations.

You can download the free getAbstract book summary of The Toyota Kata Practice Guide from Work Place Learning Centre.

The approach to continuous improvement that many Japanese employers use, us known as Kaizen, the aim of which is to create usually small improvements that deliver a whole that is greater than its individual parts. Kaizen is not necessarily something that is led from the top, it is an intrinsic part of every employee’s job, from the chief executive to the people who clean the shop floor. In many cases every employee of every company in the supply chain is also involved in the Kaizen strategy.

At Toyota this Kaizen continuous improvement process is enhanced by Kata another Japanese word, that be translated as practice makes perfect.

You can download the free getAbstract book summary of The Toyota Kata Practice Guide from Work Place Learning Centre.

Mike Rother first wrote about the approach in 2009, now in a new book he examines what the readers of that original have learnt from applying the Toyota approach in their own organisations. The result is a more sophisticated, heavily illustrated guide that is focused on the fundamentals, so it is a book that is useful for someone who is new to Kaizen and Kata, as well as the experienced practitioner.

As its title suggests this is an extremely practical guide to a different approach that connects learning, working and continuous improvement for both employees and employers.

What you will learn from this free getAbstract book summary:

• How to understand Kata culture methods for continual improvement,
• How to start and establish a Kata culture in your organization, and
• How to teach your employees to use the scientific approach to problem solving

You can download the free getAbstract book summary of The Toyota Kata Practice Guide from Work Place Learning Centre

Free download available until 14th July 2018.

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