The 7 Kata : Toyota Kata, TWI, and Lean Training

The biggest competitive advantage an organization can achieve comes from the synergies created by employees skilled in enhancing organizational dynamics. The Seven Kata: Toyota Kata, TWI, and Lean Training supplies time-tested tools and advice to help readers adapt to changing conditions and outcompete their rivals. It explainswhy a mix of the skill sets that Training Within Industry (TWI) and the Toyota Kata (behavior patterns)teachis the ideal recipe toboost organizational synergies and enhance any Lean transformation.

Bridging the kata/TWI nexus, the book lays out a road map for Lean success. It devotes a chapter to each of the Seven Kata and suggests possible courses of action dependent on your organization’s strengths and constraints. Bringing together valuable information on many of the disjointed Lean practices, it explains key Lean concepts, including gemba walks, genchi gembutsu, and PDCA.

After introducing kata, it reveals the different kata inherent in the three major TWI courses and the TWI Job Safety course. It illustrates the value stream analysis relationship to the kata and the kata relationship to TWI. It also demonstrates how to use kata to solve the problems identified in your value stream analysis while simultaneously conditioning your employees’ adaptive thinking patterns.

Supplying a clear understanding of exactly where the seven kata apply in your Lean journey, the authors include helpful guidelines for coaching a kata. They also highlight mistakes they have experienced or witnessed so you can avoid the same pitfalls. As globalism continues to make management’s organizational skills a competitive differentiator, this book provides you with the tools to use the seven kata to place your organization on a discernible path towards operational excellence.

Foreword by Patrick Graupp
Foreword by Robert J. Wrona
Foreword by Jim Huntzinger
Preface
Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 : Weapons for the Economic Warrior
Chapter 2 : Improvement Kata : Kaizen
Chapter 3 : Nested Job Instruction Kata : Learn to Teach
Chapter 4 : Coaching Kata : Teaching to Learn
Chapter 5 : Problem-Solving Kata : Seek to Understand Kata
Chapter 6 : Job Relations Kata : The Cultural Fortifier
Chapter 7 : Job Safety Kata : The Duplex Kata
Chapter 8 : Job Methods Kata : Kipling’s Kata
Chapter 9 : Submit to the Kata

Appendix : A Lean Training Within Industry (TWI) Timeline
References
Biographies
Index