Agile Production-reduces waste in the Toyota Model

What is a waste in Toyota's eyes?

1. Activities that do not create value for customers, such as inspection and Logistics

2. Despite creating value, the resources consumed far exceed the "absolute minimum" limit.

These two points are just too incisive, and we are not even aware of them. It fully embodies the BT spirit of the Japanese.

We work hard every day. Many people are busy, but we are never recognized because we don't see anything. We often put the two words together for comparison, efficiency and effect. Which one should we pay more attention? Obviously the latter. Most of the time, the former always looks very beautiful. For example, some people can say that the meeting will be endless, and the topic will be moved freely. The problem will not be solved, except for their own mouth, it's time to waste other people's time. This waste is terrible, but it is often ignored. Review what you are doing on a daily basis and confirm whether you are creating value for the customer. This is a challenge for you.

The second point is even higher requirements. This requires everyone to pay more attention to methods and methods while creating value. I once experienced a perfect component by a buddy in my team, but it took me two weeks to get the praise of everyone and the progress of the project. This is a matter of degree and consciousness. My current project needs to be deployed on servers in the United States, and it is almost done every day. Some old man started to work as soon as he had deployment requirements. As a result, the network speed is too slow. This guy keeps guarding the server, copying files, publishing, and so on. It usually takes an hour every time. What's more serious is that all the things it does are only familiar with it. Others simply don't know how to do it, where the server is, where the database is, as a result, he got stuck in receiving stories from the entire team. However, the actual daily work time is only four hours, which is a waste of one hour. In addition, every time you look for someone to represent a shift, you have to keep introducing it again, the shift substitution personnel feel that they do not really work on behalf of the shift anyway. In the recent release, I used a BAT file and implemented a line of command to solve all the problems. In this way, all the information is carried by the bat. Everyone only needs to know where the BAT file is, and pass those parameters. No one needs to watch the computer anymore. Although the same effect has been achieved, reducing the waste of time is equivalent to creating more value.

So what is the key to solving waste? Is the manufacturing method, rather than its own cost.

This is caused by hands. Many people, especially Chinese people, have the wrong idea of compressing labor costs. Take the preceding deployment example as an example. Maybe many bosses think that it takes me an hour to deploy the service without writing code? So the boss decided to find an intern to do this, to reduce costs. In fact, this is very sad. Because the problem lies in the way of thinking, rather than the labor cost. Finding an intern does not improve your company's competitiveness. I don't always ask every project to have a bunch of interns to bring tea to the water, right? Therefore, improving the process is the key to reducing waste.

What are the seven major wastes that Toyota summed up?

1. Excessive production. Toyota's production must be in PULL mode, that is, on-demand production. All parts without Kanban must be inspected by supervisors. As a result, we often see that the development is based on our feelings and experience to create many features that are not required by the customer. These features not only bring about the cost of maintenance, but also allow testing, documentation, after-sales, training, and other online personnel to follow your back.

2. Waste of work. In the face of the task, whether it is based on the front and back, or a small functional point is a technical problem. The optimized process is to reach everyone's end point at the same time, because agility is a typical barrel effect and only calculates the Time of the person who finally reaches the end point. It is unfair for people who finish their jobs in advance to do other things, because in many cases, it is not because of your ability, but the unreasonable division of labor. The key to solving the problem is to make the quality of personnel more comprehensive, machine and equipment more flexible, process more reasonable, and division of labor more accurate.

3. Waste of handling. Online Software development is also an integral part. The connection of each link needs to be carefully designed. For example, when a developer submits a test request, how to notify the tester and the tester to enter the test according to the standard must be defined.

4. processing waste. It mainly refers to the waste caused by tools and other environmental factors. For example, the development environment is unstable, components cannot be loaded, and third-party licenses always expire. This is not a waste.

5. Inventory waste. It is also the management cost caused by excessive production. For example, if you have done the story of the next release, it is unnecessary to remove unnecessary files and classes when you cut off.

6. Waste of action. If agile scrum teams don't sit together, it's a waste of time to find people before discussing a problem. Therefore, we require that agile development be very close to everyone.

7. Waste of defective products. Needless to say, the maintenance cost of a bug is several times that of a single build. The opinions of various experts are not uniform.

There are two other types of costs, namely the creativity and management Waste of unused employees.

Besides, there are many ways to put an end to waste. I think the most important first step is to let everyone know what waste is, because many times we are not aware that we are wasting. It is very important to improve the visualization of waste. For example, daily stand meeting is very important. When working in synchronization, you can easily see if you are synchronizing data with the team and if you have any deviations. If yes, you must immediately correct it.