By Roger Aguilar
Today technology makes just about everything in life considerably easier. We often take these advancements for granted as they surround us in our daily life. For example; you probably do not think about how your car is made even if you have recently been to a dealership to look at what is new. These highly advanced machines that we drive every day are made up of extremely complex systems that have been refined since the first automobile. Not only have these vehicles changed a great deal over the years, but also their manufacturing process has advanced to meet the needs of the world’s ever-growing population.
One company at the forefront of manufacturing vehicles for their customers is Toyota. They have developed a system to not only be as efficient as possible but to constantly adapt and improve upon itself based on the demands of their customers. What makes Toyota’s production system unique is its bottom-up style of implementing improvements as opposed to top-down. This combination of adaptation is what makes Toyota’s production system a complex adaptive system, but to understand how this benefits Toyota you must first understand what a complex adaptive system is.
A complex system is essentially a system in which many intricate parts that have known actions, adapt and interact causing dynamic and potentially chaotic outcomes. These systems are very complex, and dynamically adapt to changes to the system. Some real-world examples of complex adaptive systems would be highway traffic patterns or the ecosystem of a forest. All the plants and animals that live within an ecosystem interact dynamically and adapt based on changes to their environment either from each other or something like a forest fire.
All Complex adaptive systems share characteristics that define them as such.
- They are made up of many parts and agents: In a complex adaptive system there are many agents or parts that impact the system. These parts and actors could be biological, mechanical, or even entire societies when looking at a large scale.
- The individual parts follow simple rules: These individual parts of a system all follow separate, simple rules that have a difficult, if not impossible, to predict impact on the system.
- There is no leading actor coordinating actions of parts: Although these parts influence the system, there is no leader or coordinator that gives direction to these parts. Their individual tasks and goals are not actively guided by a single or central power or actor. Instead, their interactions with one another impact the system and how it changes.
- Interactions create patterns: Interactions between the parts of the system are influenced dynamically by their environment and each other. From these interactions emergent patterns are formed despite the parts not being directed to do so. Think of an ecosystem maintaining equilibrium by increasing and decreasing the population of predators to prey animals. No single hand guides this but it is still achieved through dynamic change and adaptation by the system.
- If pieces are altered the system adapts: If the individual parts of the system are altered then the system adapts to these alterations starting at the base individual level causing a dynamic change to the system in a ripple effect.
Now that you know a little bit more about complex adaptive systems lets circle back to Toyota and their production system. Toyota’s production system was created with efficiency in mind and with an emphasis on waste free. This system has gone through many years of improvement and adaptation to deliver quality products to customers as efficiently and with as much quality as possible. In the early days of Toyota durring the 1950s the company did not have excess space or finances to justify acquiring large quantities of material. To compensate for these disadvantages Toyota developed methods to not only work around these issues, but also to produce cars faster, cheaper, and with less waste. There are two major aspects in Toyota’s production system that helped shepherd it to its goals of efficiency. The first being “Jidoka” and the second being the “just-in-time” concept.
Jidoka can be translated as “automation” but has been used to mean “built in quality” where the opportunity is taken to prevent mass errors by stopping the production process before the errors are carried over to the next system. This was done by meshing human engineering and mechanical automation to implement machines that were designed to stop the production process if an error had occurred. As these mechanisms are implemented, they are constantly being improved to become more efficient and require less and less human intervention to prevent errors in production. Before these changes are implemented, they go through rigorous testing to determine if they would benefit the system first.
The “Just-in-time” concept aims to decrease waste and cost by only producing the parts necessary to satisfy the immediate demands of the customer’s order. This prevents the waste of time and cost from excessive production of materials that would otherwise slow the production process. An example of how this process works would be its approach to supply. When an order is placed the beginning of the process must be stocked with the right amount of supply needed for the order. As that item is used for the order, only the amount of material that was just used is replaced to be ready for the next order without having excess.
When taking these two tenets from the Toyota production system into consideration we can find several similarities between TPS and complex adaptive systems.
- Constant adaptation through demand input.
- As Toyota continues to evolve its’ production system, it relies on the demand and input from its’ customers to determine what direction to move in. Toyota makes constant changes to their automation process as well to produce higher or lower quantities of inventory to simultaneously meet their customer’s needs without wasting unnecessary resources. While on the smaller scale, the machines and operators make their own adjustments based on information received from other parts of the system to create a seamless flow of dynamic adaptation
- No leadership of individual parts.
- While Toyota’s goal is to meet their customers needs, it’s bottom-up leadership style encourages changes and improvements to be made at the individual level. Toyota believes that its line workers should never be satisfied with the status quo and should always be look for ways to improve their roles to benefit the entirety of the TPS.
- Unpredictability due to customer demand but adaptation leads to patterns.
- As the demands of the customer are ever changing, and at times unpredictable, so too are the actions of the system. In the pursuit of achieving “Kaizen” or continuous improvement, TPS must constantly make changes to it ‘self. Despite the unpredictability of their customer’s needs, and the adaptations being made to meet those needs, emergent patterns form within the system. These patterns are not guided or directed by the system but rather a symptom of interaction of the separate parts within it.
Ultimately, complex adaptive systems are just that, complex and so too is the Toyota production system. By understanding how complex adaptive systems work, we are able to understand why the TPS is so successful in a highly competitive market.
