Chris,

The area of collaboration is one that interests me. Many people are
suggesting that we will be moving from from designers doing it themselves to
designers participating in open networks to co-create. I would be interested
in the views of the group on how this process evolve for product design.
What will be the new set of skills and education required. How will products
be designed and what will be the activities of professional designers. How
will designers add value and gain value from the process? If there are
36,000 people designing a toothbrush how will they and who wil get paid? I
joined IDForum soon after it was established in 1991. The jiscmail groups
including this one were a type of  prototype for global social networking
like we now see on facebook and LinkedIn but networks are not yet as
effective at making things as say Amazon is at selling books.Is Toyota using
a process something like social networking?

Rob

On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 3:13 PM, Chris Rust <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Rob Curedale wrote:
>
>> Chris wrote:
>>
>> "I don't think the Toyota model is particularly "collaborative".
>> "The Toyota system is a challenge to the idea of geniuses or heroic
>> innovators because it depends on communities of practice. The various
>> elements that contribute to the system, particularly the Kanban approach to
>> demand-driven manufacturing, the continuous improvement ethos, cellular
>> manufacturing and the culture described by Nonaka and Takeuchi in "The
>> Knowledge Creating Company" all depend on democratic efforts by groups of
>> ordinary workers to shape and manage their contribution and a culture of
>> consensus. Its success depends on the knowledge, skills and experience of
>> those workers."
>> Your two statements seem to be inconsistent. Can you expain further?
>> Rob
>>
>
> Yes of course. I see the Toyota model as being heavy on consensus and close
> attention to detail within groups. Of course there is collaboration but I
> tend to read "collaboration" in the way that it was being proposed in our
> discussion as an inter-disciplinary inter-departmental focus - putting
> collaboration between different groups at the forefront of the business as
> with concurrent engineering. When Black and Decker introduced concurrent
> engineering in the 1980s one of their key moves was communication skills
> training because everybody had to be able to talk to everybody else. My
> reading of the Japanese approach is that it is led by good communication and
> teamwork within groups, quite a different problem and arguably more
> manageable.
>
> My reading of the demand driven aspects of manufacturing logistics, as
> pioneered by Japanese manufacturers, particularly cellular manufacturing and
> the Kanban system, is that they emphasise the autonomy of small units as
> individual businesses, serving their customer cells who pull production down
> and pulling production down in turn from supplier cells. It's a market model
> rather than a team one. That emphasis on the autonomy of workers and cells,
> empowering any worker to stop the line is a good example, actually lowers
> the pressure on teamwork - you only collaborate when something goes wrong,
> as when rocks are revealed in the River and Rocks model for inventory
> reduction. You don't have to maintain a continuous collaboration just to
> keep things rolling.
>
> Of course I could be wrong :o)
>
> best wishes from Sheffield
> Chris
>



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Rob Curedale | President | Curedale Inc | 22148 Monte Vista Drive Topanga
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