(This is the fifth in a 12-part series on the <a title="origins of Lean" href="http://www.massingenuity.com/blog/series/origins-of-lean/">origins of Lean</a> in the U.S. and my role as one of its pioneers.)

It was clear that employees in Japan were engaged. Toyota was famous for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andon_(manufacturing)" target="_blank">andon</a>, a manufacturing term used to describe a system whereby employees could “pull the cord” and alert management and engineering that there was a quality problem. Pulling the cord resulted in the production line coming to a stop and causing all resources to be focused on resolving the problem all the way back to its root cause.

YouTube: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_nSvN_L4hc" target="_blank">Why Buy a Toyota – Andon Cord</a>

In the U.S. we used inventory to hide these kinds of problems. If there was a problem with a part we had an extra batch of parts around and would set the bad one aside for the quality department to analyze. But in Japan a quality problem caused immediate focus on problem solving and a drive to eliminate all quality problems at their source. It was a philosophy of “build quality in” versus an “inspect bad quality out” approach.

<a href="http://www.massingenuity.com/2013/04/30/quality-circles-the-u-s-false-start-to-lean/">Read More....</a>