The Lean Post / Articles / Toyota Kata at Zingerman’s Mail Order
Operations
By Mike Rother
April 1, 2018
This month's Toyota Kata video is about the early days of TK practice at Zingerman's Mail Order. Decision-making can be moved more to the teams in an organization, if that's combined with teaching people a scientific way of making decisions and navigating. Practicing the starter routines of TK helps develop scientific-thinking skills and mindset.
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About Mike Rother
Mike is co-author of two groundbreaking LEI workbooks, Learning to See: value-stream mapping to add value and eliminate muda, which received a Shingo Research Award in 1999 and Creating Continuous Flow: an action guide for managers, engineers and production associates, which received a Shingo Award in 2003. Mike’s recent books are Toyota Kata (McGraw-Hill), Toyota Kata Culture, and the forthcoming Toyota Kata Practice Guide.
Mike is an engineer, researcher, and teacher on the subjects of management, leadership, improvement, adaptiveness, and change in human organizations. His affiliations have included the Industrial Technology Institute in Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan College of Engineering, the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation, Stuttgart, and the Technical University Dortmund. Mike works to develop scientific thinking in individuals, teams and organizations, shares his findings widely, and is in the Association for Manufacturing Excellence Hall of Fame.
Operations
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