NEW BOOK! TWI Job Instruction Training

What a great way to start the New Year! Or as Jon Miller likes to call it, an Arbitrary Dividing Line in Time :)

Regardless of the time of the year, it is always the right time to pick up a new skill. As of today Mark Warren of Tesla 2, Inc. and I have released our first book: Job Instruction Training: Participant's Sessions Guide & Implementation Manual

(Click on image to left for ordering information)

We are really excited about this, but what is this all about? The basic idea was this: there are a lot of people out there that are using Job Instruction and other TWI J-skills based on several premises:

1) We know it was used at Toyota after the war, (if it works for them, then we should do it)

2) many have mistakenly pigeonholed JI as Standard Work, (Toyota does Standard Work, so we should at least do this!)

3) and recently, many professionals have billed and marketed TWI as one of the foundation stones of lean.

but...TWI blog readers who have been through the archival material on my sites (and in the past year, have visited Mark's newly acquired archive records) intuitively know there is a lot more to know about TWI than what is currently available in a simple 10 hr training session.

This book is our attempt to fill that void of information between the famous 10 hr session and what might be considered a successful implementation. So, the book is divided into two parts. Part One is the Participant's Guide. Our guide follows the best known practices for a 10 hr Job Instruction Session. This would normally be unremarkable, except our book can be used as a self-study guide with the included answer key and references throughout Part One.

Part Two is in chapter format and expands on the concepts learned in the sessions, but also insists on the requirements for sound implementation. This is the first aim of the book - to provide the reader with the things you should know about Job Instruction before you start, but won't find out even in a 10 hr training session. The reason for this combination of guide, concepts and reference is born from experience and the research Mark and I have done over the past two years.

Who is this book aimed at? In keeping with the spirit of Job Instruction - one can learn by doing. So, anyone can use it. But trainers can use the standardized participants guide that will follow most reputable trainer's guides today. To this end, the book is sold in groups of ten to meet this training need, coupled with discounts of single volume sales to keep session costs down.

We also hope this book will succeed in providing a source for those individuals who are unable to attend a Job Instruction session for logistic, economic or other reasons. These thousands of small business owners and individuals who are limited to self study and implementation are at ease knowing they are practicing at the leading edge of JI training without the expense of travel to a 10 hr sessions. By using the included answer key and then digging into the meaty Part Two, one can dig deeper into the concepts of the J-skills in order to expand their leadership ability.

Ordering information for single volumes can be found by clicking here. Contact me with any questions at the email above! To expand on this, look for a trainer's manual between now and February!

Trainers: Order kits of 10 for your Job Instruction Session by clicking here!

The Correct Way is the Safe Way

In a 1949 report to the ILO, TWI Foundation director, Channing Dooley provides explanation of the benefits of Job Instruction. This is a good follow up to my previous post about the Job Safety manual, which was derived from the Job Instruction manual. But specifically, Mr. Dooley details precisely what JI instructors and practitioners realize when breaking down jobs:

“This process could be rapidly and very economically applied to the development of such special operating programs as safety for three reasons. First, it would tend to make every supervisor safety minded, because he himself becomes a safety instructor. When the supervisor is responsible for safety it is difficult for him to pass all the responsibility to a staff safety man.”

There is a lot of talk about accountability of creating and upholding standards. The question we must ask then is this: do we just “empower” others with accountability – “you are hereby accountable!” or do we give people the skills to be accountable so that it is difficult for them to pass the buck?

“Second, the very process of breaking down a job, and requiring each worker to do it the correct way as a part of good job instruction, promotes safety because in most cases the correct way to do a job is the safe way…”

When breaking down jobs where people interact with machines, it is inevitable that you will uncover safety key points. It is also likely that you will find that the correct way to do the job conflicts with the use of tools, methods and policies. For example, safety knives are commonly used to prevent lacerations in the workplace. But inexplicably, lacerations still exist. One reason for this is that the safety knife may not be useful in all applications and people will bypass the safety policy or guards on the knife. This may result in a laceration because the person may not know the correct cutting method (cut away from your body). Many accidents can be avoided by teaching correct methods, rather than relying on contraptions that can be overcome and defeated. Another example is lifting devices. Is it cumbersome, timely or difficult to use a lifting device? Perhaps correct training will prevent workers from avoiding lifting aids and devices and resorting to manhandling heavy objects.

“Third, it directs the safety approach to the needs of each particular industry or shop operation, and not just to safety per se. Better results will be obtained by training safety directors who specialize in particular industries rather than to give all safety directors complete well-rounded courses in safety engineering. A safety director is more valuable to his organization as an instructor – salesman, if you please – of safe practices to supervisors than as merely a source of professional knowledge.”

Here is a way, as directors and managers, to follow up on our practices and methods of instruction to determine if people are utilized and effective. Take our lifting device or knife method for example. A safety director can use Job Instruction skills and guidelines to follow up with supervisors in order to evaluate the methods, tools, and materials used in production that contribute to safe or dangerous practices. This approach can lead to improvement at the macro and micro level. Having a specialty in OSHA compliance is useful, but many violations and trouble can be avoided by simply being familiar with the industry itself and specific operations that one is employed to improve. This familiarity is easily found by breaking down jobs and teaching the 4 step method using Job Instruction.

Canadian War Production and Job Safety Manual

After being trained by the U.S. TWI Service during WWII, the Canadian Ministry of Labour adapted Job Instruction to the narrow field of safety, yielding an impressive J-skill program to the TWI world - simply called Job Safety. You can download a copy of the Canadian manual here or go to the Job Safety page at TWI Service.

Canada is a small country, but quite resourceful. This link will load a PDF with a quick fact sheet on the Canadian contribution to the WWII production effort.

Job Instruction Will Save Your Life!

Well, o.k., technically, the JI manual won't save your life. But a person may try to save your life someday! Are they ready? Today, TWI guest blogger, Sean Jordan shares his experience of how we can be better prepared for emergencies:

I recently attended an American Red Cross First Aid and CPR certification classes and all I could think about was Job Instruction.

First, this program was another example of a very personable content expert with shortcomings on instructional skills. Like many trainers in any environment, he did his best using the typical instructional paradigm: Talk, Demo, Use a Video, Student Tries, and move on to the next topic. Perhaps the root cause is the Red Cross trainer that certified this person as a trainer was not completely skilled as an instructor too.

Second, there is a lot of information to cover and it is set in a tight time requirement. How many times have we seen someone want the best of two worlds: complete training on content in the shortest amount of time?

Third, this seemed more like a cram session and the ability to thoroughly retain the information for more than one week seems doubtful. This is information that can potentially make a difference in an injured person’s life.

[Note, our instructor pretty much told us that the odds of us actually using these skills to save someone’s life are extremely low. Also, no matter what we do, we really can’t make things worse. REALLY?! Then why the heck am I here for the night classes?]

Hopefully, many of us will not need to use these skills until the next certification exam but it would be nice to retain this knowledge. I will be working on ‘refresher sessions’ with the team. Perhaps I’ll have them write some Job Breakdown Sheets of the training activities. It will certainly increase their knowledge retention by making a JBS as well as assist in the next class. Maybe it will motivate the instructor?

Fourth, the only way to understand the reasons for what we were doing was to ask probing questions.

Finally, there wasn’t a class survey or discussion about how to improve the course. Every training event has an opportunity for improvement, no matter how many times you have done it!

My actions are to follow up with the American Red Cross and share why I think they should consider apply Job Instruction. The good news is that they already have outstanding standardized procedures for applying CPR and First Aid. Also, most people probably want to follow those procedures exactly. You may hear in your assembly shop: “Yeah, but I like to build it this way.” I don’t think I have ever heard someone say “The Red Cross claims CPR should be done like that, but I like to do CPR this way.”

Don’t worry, if I see you in need of immediate care, I will be adequately prepared to assist.

Sean Jordan is Training and Development Manager at Biotek Instruments, Inc., in Colchester, Vermont.

TWI Summit 2009

There is still time to sign up for the 2009 TWI Summit! Looks like TWI is spreading into many diverse industries: apparrel, healthcare, construction, shipbuilding, semiconductor are just a start!

Darcy Montgomery and Stacy Kerkhof will present a Reebok case study. Mark Graban, author of Lean Hospitals, will discuss TWI in healthcare. Intel and IBM will present their case studies, by James Hyder and Jeff Maling, respectively. Jeff has been at the frontlines of repatriating TWI thinking back into U.S. industry, for several years now and is a member of SME Chapter #204. Jeff and I have spent way too much time pouring through the "new" concepts presented in books he has dug out of the past, even as far back as 1915 where the first "pull vs. push" system was described in detail.

And there are more breakout sessions than ever. Don Dinero will conduct a Job Methods breakout session and David Meyer is back with Tracey Richardson to demonstrate Problem Solving as a companion to TWI. Hal Macomber will also hold a breakout session on "Quick N' Easy" kaizen, where Hal has adapted J-session thinking to daily continuous improvement. I think this will be one of the most intriguing as Quick N' Easy is the logical conclusion of Job Methods training. One problem with Job Methods training is that it doesn't reach down far enough in to the organization, nor does it often go high enough. This is a common problem with Lean programs in the U.S. and Quick N' Easy kaizen is a way to get EVERYONE involved.

As important as the summit is to me, I won't be attending this year. My wife and I had other plans - our fourth son is due on May 21! So, wish us luck and have a great summit. I will see you next year!

Real Work and Common Sense

Kevin at Evolving Excellence brought a TED presentation to our attention. The presenter is Mike Rowe, or Dirty Jobs. You can see Kevin's post here. A couple of things struck me as lessons learned through TWI:

"Safety Third!" Mike says that the Safety First slogan is akin to putting the cart before the horse, or, just because we say so, doesn't make it so.

In TWI Job Instruction, safety is always a keypoint. People mix up the common sense fact that people get jobs done all the time in unsafe ways. It is how we do the job that makes it safe, so in a sense - safety is not first: good high quality standard work is first, then a good training delivery that builds conscientiousness into the training regimen will RESULT in good safety practices. This is the paradox of Job Instruction.

Compare this to safety slogan campaigns: a poster does nothing to actually convey the nuance of a delicate job that if done incorrectly - can take your fingers off. Or think about when a manager implores us to be safe, what does that mean really? Does the manager understand what "being safe" really means while actually on the job? Talk the talk and walking the walk are two completely different things.

One Dirty Jobs episode involves Mike working a tannery - removing flesh from a sheep skin. There were some mighty fine keypoints on how to do that job that involved doing the job right - don't let the machine do this, give the skin that amount of tension, don't do this, do that instead. All of this was done as a set of machine driven rollers tried to suck the skin through a narrow gap, nearly pulling a careless work through the machine. Unsafe? You bet. But if the job methods keypoints are standardized - the quality, tricks and safety keypoints - the result is a high quality skin for tanning, and Mike does the job safely keeping his fingers. If quality is achieved, safety follows. This is why safe companies know that safety comes third!

WHY Must This Happen?

This is irritating.

From the Safety Files at online mag, Machine Design.com, we learn how poor maintenance resulted in an on the job injury.

Bottom line: a poorly maintained dock leveler crushed a person’s hand. We can imagine how a five why session may play out in this situation. If you prefer to, please go to the article link above and follow along with the full story and pictures.

Q - WHY did the person’s hand get crushed?

A - The lip on the ramp hit the truck, building up tension and then jumped loose, pinching his hand.

Q - WHY did the truck hit the ramp?

A - Well, it wasn’t the truck that hit the ramp. It’s really the other way around. Normally the ramp clears the truck bed and then in full extension the lifter it swings the lip to extend from vertical to horizontal. This time it didn’t. So the lip just got caught on the truck.

Q - O.k. WHY didn’t the lifter clear the truck bed?

A - Well it did, but it just didn’t get to its full extension which is what swings out the lip and bridge the gap between the dock and truck bed.

Q - O.k., so WHY didn’t the lifter reach full extension?

A - I’m not sure. But we do know it doesn’t work the way it should. I have to manually lift that lip each time. I’ve asked to have somebody take a look at it but nothing has been done.

Q - HOW do you lift that safely then?

A - Well, I use a hook to pull the chain that engages lift mechanism. That allows me to manually lift the lip edge from inside the truck while the dock lowers.

Q - Is that hook provided by the manufacturer?

A - Nope. I made it so I could get the job done. Drivers are waiting for me you know and we have ontime shipments to make!

Q - Well, HOW does the manufacturer recommend to you the operation of that lift?

A - Normally the chain is pulled through a hole on the other side of the ramp. But because it doesn’t work, I have to be on that side of the ramp, inside the truck, to make it work correctly. The hook allows me to pull the chain from inside the truck.

Q - Let's ask a mechanic why that lift mechanism isn't working properly...

By now you should be getting the point, of which there are many.

#1 - A questioning attitude in the genba is the only way to see and understand these types of problems. Hosin Kanri workshops for five days and four glorious nights at an offsite conference center in San Diego will not solve this problem. Only a genba approach will do. (My apologies to Hoshin Kanri consultants in San Diego who may offer pricey workshops for five days - it just seemed like a nice place to go when you are in Vermont and WINTER WON'T GO AWAY!)

#2 - NEVER stop questioning until you get to root cause and can verify your line of questioning through cause and effect. 5Y doesn't really mean ONLY to ask WHY? five times. (tangential- random-thought-taking-over: The next time I see a 5Y worksheet with only five questions on it...well, that's what us lean consultants have marketed it as, eh? We only have ourselves to blame.)

#3 - Our problems do not exist on their own - they live on and become parasitic because we allow them to. The system is a direct reflection of the architects and keepers of that system - namely MANAGEMENT. Leaders make management better.

#4 - There is a saying in lean: "to find the waste, look for the piles of inventory." The same is true with makeshift devices. The makeshift hook is a clue for shopfloor leaders that something is wrong.

#5 - The MOST troubling point out of all of this is that the drivers "had repeatedly complained about the dock leveler problems" - yet NOTHING was done. Scratch that - management allowed something to be done: they permitted the driver to craft a hook so he could operate defective equipment that put his family's livelihood, the business itself, other truck drivers and the leveler manufacturer at risk. This scenario represents the eighth waste in manufacturing - waste of intellect and at the very least it demonstrates ZERO respect for people and in this case the lack of respect went WAY beyond just the employee.

Clean Doesn't Always Mean Lean

Mark Graban went on quite a rant the other day at the LeanBlog - cutting up the inspector that was involved with the salmonella outbreaks at the Peanut Corporation of America. This is one story that means a lot to me - I LOVE peanut butter. Well that fact explains why I read the news story linked to Mark's blog post - I wanted to know how this company defiled my second true love!

Mark admirably picked apart all of the problems with the private sector inspection process. We can only assume that the FDA inspection equals the level of the private sector inspection - but at eight times the cost. (Side note: that fact doesn't inspire me to want to go out and sign up for universal healthcare right at this moment!)

Regarding the poisoning of our food, my intuition tells me that it is a rare occasion that these outbreaks occur - and statistically it affects a very small fraction of the population - in this case 0.008% of the U.S. population. That statistic is not exactly heartwarming to the families of nine people who died or encouraging to the 22,500 who were sickened. Regardless, it helps us understand the concept of risk, no?

How could the inspector have missed this? There are many reasons. Mark covered many of them, mostly procedural and bureaucratic or just simply can be written off to laziness or apathy.

There is one quote however that jumped off the page at me:

"Audits are not required by the government, but food companies are increasingly requiring suppliers to undergo them as a way to ensure safety and minimize liability. The rigor of audits varies widely and many companies choose the cheapest ones, which cost as little as $1,000, in contrast to the $8,000 the Food and Drug Administration spends to inspect a plant. Typically, the private auditors inspect only manufacturing plants, not the suppliers that feed ingredients to those facilities. Nor do they commonly test the actual food products for pathogens, even though gleaming production lines can turn out poisoned fare. "

O.k., let me get this straight:

1. Audits are not required by the FDA,


2. Consumer safety is seen as important,


3. Liability, or the cost of reputation, is also important,


4. We don't want to spend a lot of money on auditing,


5. We go with the lowest bidder,


6. We also know that "gleaming production lines can turn out poisoned fare."

Wow, this last point is not only a little scary but most important in making my point. It implies that we are either lulled into complacency by first impressions, we can't see problems through the high gloss of appearance, or we are not looking for problems in the first place. Even the cleanest, best looking operation in the world can turn out scrap. That doesn't sound possible, but we all know it is true. We cannot let first impressions deceive us - we have to go to the genba and understand if the process capability and resulting quality will reconcile with our impressions.

This is a core skill for lean businesses - and one that we cannot delegate to outsiders. The outsiders should be helping us get better at our own self-assessment. This is why we must encourage people to look for, embrace and figure out solutions to problems. In fact, since we are already paying people, it is cheaper to have them do their own diagnostic assessment of the operation. And, if we ask them, often they will tell us the problems they have known about for years and even have solutions for them! Imagine that! We can blame the auditor, but that doesn't solve the problem. We first have to look at ourselves as managers for not developing a culture that embraces problem identification before the problem turns into a consumer safety issue.

By the way, Teddie Peanut Butter is the best!

Key Points Don’t Always Hurt You…BUT They Do Hurt!

We bought this cool compact treadmill but found that it was marking up the wood floor, so I purchased a mat. The mat arrived a few days later in a taped cardboard box which was taped like a mummy. Anyway, out came the utility knife! I bent over the box without kneeling, reach as far forward as I could and plunged the blade into the gap between the flap and box. As I pulled the blade towards myself, I swiftly cut the taped seam. As the blade came closer, I just nicked my pant leg – a near miss!

I was lucky, but many people in factories are not as lucky as I was. At the recent TWI Summit, Don Dinero and I were talking about key points and how they don’t always burn you, but when they do…they hurt! When I had my near miss...something Don said quickly came to mind: key points don't alway hurt you, but eventually they will! If you have been in any of Don's JI sessions, you know his coffee maker story about key points. If you love coffee like I do, you will find his story about not knowing key points absolutely tragic ;)

Back to my knife problem. How many times have you done something a certain way, only to have it go wrong and you are left scratching your head – “what just happened here? Every other time I’ve done it this way, it worked just fine!” We end up writing it off as a fluke, failing to miss the critical passage of a missed key point.

Surprisingly, I see people cutting towards their bodies or digits often, making the same unconscious mistake that I made. And that is the problem, isn’t it? We do our jobs unconsciously, not really thinking about what we are doing because we think we know the job so well. The reality is, we are often just plain lucky.

I thought about my near miss and wrote a break down sheet so I could work my way through the potential problems I encountered. One of the problems was that if I had kneeled, I probably would have taken my time, in control and not rushed – rather than try to make one cut. If I was kneeling next to the box, I certainly wouldn’t have cut towards my legs.

Often people will purchase cut-proof gloves, safety knifes and fish knives and rely on the PPE to protect employees. Amazingly, I’ve seen people remove the guarding or mechanisms on safety knives, only so they become a more general purpose tool. The reality is this, unless people know the key points of the job, they will never know standard. If they don’t know the standard you are just plain lucky something hasn’t gone wrong today. The following link will bring you to my example JBS:

Job Instruction Breakdown Sheet Example

Newest Extreme Reality TV Show - EXTREME LOCKOUT TAGOUT!!

Can your team survive the hazards of the workplace? Tune in as teams face formidable opponents such as:

The Electrical Disconnect of Doom...




If your team is lucky enough to survive that, you will surely meet your fate against:

The Uncontrolled Potential Energy Source - Pipeline of Power!!!

Lowell Mellen Papers Summary - TWI in Japan

Here is a link to the summary provided by Case Western Reserve Historical Society Library's regarding the Lowell Mellen Papers:

http://ech.case.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=MLO

The Great Divide

What is the great divide between “the art of management” and “the science of management”? We get a clue in the December 10, 2007 issue of The New Yorker. In The Checklist, Atul Gawande explains how one doctor is radically changing medicine by improving the processes that doctors, nurses and specialists are engaged in everyday. For example, a checklist used in ICU reduced line infection rates from eleven percent to zero. Think zero defects in manufacturing. Part of a study done in ICUs found that an average of 178 procedures are completed on a patient. Inserting a line is only one of those steps. What else could go wrong?

Read the entire article and get it in the hands of others. It is compelling. It also helps quell the riot of that standard work stuff doesn’t work here mantra. If standard work can be effective in hospitals where an ICU team will face 1 over 32,000 possible combinations of procedures for every patient with on average of 178 steps for each combinations, then it can standard work will work for us in manufacturing.

This article reads like it was plucked from the newest lean manufacturing book. Take for example the quote from the subject of the article, Peter Pronovost,

“The fundamental problem with the quality of American medicine is that we’ve failed to view delivery of health care as a science. The tasks of medical science fall into three buckets. One is understanding disease biology. One is finding effective therapies. And one is insuring those therapies are delivered effectively. That third bucket has been almost totally ignored by research funders, government and academia. It’s viewed as the art of medicine. That’s a mistake, a huge mistake.”

How many people out there think that what they do is more art than science? The fact is, it just feels like an art when everything works well. We just don’t see the pattern of repeatability in what we do. Whether it is the nurse feeling for a vein, an artist feeling the correct brush stroke, an mechanic setting the right torque, or an operator lifting something safely, there is definite and correct technique that produces a unique result.

In management, how often have you heard that management is an art, not a science? Isn’t it time we put that old horse to rest? Is the great divide between art and science then the concept of process improvement thinking?

Safety is ALWAYS a Key Point

In Job Instruction, key points are defined as how to do the job. There are three broadly classified key points:

1. Things that make or break the job (quality)


2. Tricks or knacks that make the job easier (productivity/efficiency)


3. Things that can injure the worker. (safety)

Case in point: soldering. Many know what to do when soldering, but often don’t know how to do it safely, efficiently and correctly. Once an operator burned herself with a soldering iron. When asked how it happened, she said that she was “pushing too hard” on the soldering iron and her fingers slipped. The operator was applying pressure to the solder joint, a major step in the process, but the key point is how much pressure to apply. If trained properly, the operator would have applied the correct pressure to the solder joint and her fingers would not have slipped and been burned. Now, rather than train her properly in soldering, the managers will find a device that will shield her fingers from the solder tip. This is not corrective action, since the wrong pressure will still be applied to the solder joint, causing other problems in efficiency and quality. Safety is ALWAYS a key point and is closely tied to productivity and quality.

Safety is built into U.S. Standards…what is in China's?

“Taming the Dragon” an article in the recent issue of Industry Week surprises us, in which the author begins by summarizing the ripple effects caused by recent toy product safety blunders in Chinese owned manufacturing plants. However, an attempt is made to clarify the misunderstanding over the toy recalls in the following excerpt:

“As more was learned about the recalled toys, however, it became obvious the vast majority of the recalls had nothing to do with the Chinese and everything to do with Mattel -- namely, a product design flaw that caused magnets on some toys to come loose. When Mattel CEO Robert Eckert issued a public mea culpa to China for damage done to the country's reputation – ‘Mattel does not hold Chinese manufacturers responsible for the design in relation to the recalled magnet toys’ -- it was a clear sign of exactly how important China's factories are to the U.S. toy industry, as roughly 80% of all toys sold in the U.S. are made in China. And it's an even clearer sign that Mattel has no plans to pull its manufacturing out of China any time soon. Nor, in all likelihood, do any other U.S. companies who rely on Chinese manufacturers to produce the vast majority of their goods.”

Blanchard does such a good job of blurring the line on which recall is which, now I was nearly convinced that the only recalls out there were due to Mattel’s product design flaws regarding magnet retention devices and the Chinese were really not responsible for the nearly 20 million toys recalled. Blanchard is entirely correct in the magnet recall making up the “vast” majority of recalls (nearly 90% of total recalls) but the he implies that Chinese manufacturers had little impact on the Mattel recalls. He states that U.S. consumers were “outraged” over the recalls but seems to miss the point entirely by confusing poor magnet retention design with unauthorized lead-paint use and the subsequent parties responsible for them. The fact remains: Chinese manufacturers are responsible for nearly 2.2 million recalled toys due to impermissible lead paint levels: demonstrating a profound disregard for consumer safety in this case. Unfortunately, Blanchard fails to expand on this point, and extols the Chinese ambitions for world class manufacturing excellence as illustrated in the IW survey. He concludes by stating that it is only inevitable that we engage China in competition and cooperation:

“While China is often pointed to as emblematic of everything that's gone wrong with U.S. manufacturing, there's no escaping the reality that the sheer size of the Chinese market makes it an almost irresistible opportunity for growth. In fact, China bought more than $55 billion worth of U.S. goods in 2006. Product quality issues and intellectual property protection are two very real concerns for U.S. manufacturers, but by closely studying both China's culture and its manufacturing initiatives, U.S. companies are finding that the rewards can be worth the risks.”

Blanchard makes a true statement regarding our long term engagement with China, but a partnership by definition is reciprocal; the burden of product safety rests with everyone who touches that product during manufacture. The fact remains: Chinese manufacturers used lead-based paint, while blatantly disregarding Mattel’s safety standards, designed to protect children. The economic consequences for Chinese manufacturers are largely unknown to U.S. consumers, but what we do know is ominous if regarded at a personal level: one Chinese owner committed suicide, several are under criminal investigation by the Chinese government and a former food and drug administrator was executed for fraud.

Is corporal punishment part of the new World Class Manufacturing Standard?

Why do we expect China to take product consumer safety seriously when a death sentence is the chosen method of problem solving? In a Lean company, the fear of failure is abhorred, through the constant challengeing and subsequent improvement of product and work standards. If China is serious about TQM, Lean and other "fear-free" world class mfg initiatives as suggested by the IW survey, then we have little to fear in terms of true competitiveness and can certainly expect more low-cost labor outsourcing along with the sub-standard safety.

Check out the following 1 minute video that really says it all: is there any doubt that safety is at the forefront of Chinese industry’s concerns?

Links & Sources: September 21, 2007 PRESS STATEMENT OF MATTEL

Mattel Announces Recall of 11 Toys as a Result of Extensive Ongoing Investigation and Product Testing