A. Discuss issues involved in the “Network change” from the case “Fragile and Robust-Network Change in Toyota Motor Corporation described below.
B. From Appendix 1: Maintaining Change, create a force field analysis from a potential change in an organization. (Use a fictitious organization, such as Company ABC).
Must be 2 FULL pages written in APA style.
Must be written in 3rd person
Must have title page and reference page
Title
Name
Class
Date
The reference for the appendixes below is:
Cummings, T.G., Worley, C.G., & Vanim, G.A. (2012). Systems Approach to Organizational Change. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
Fragile and Robust�Network Change in Toyota Motor Corporation
The Toyota Motor Corporation is one of the best car companies in the world. It is efficient, flexible, and routinely produces many of the world�s best-engineered cares with the lowest costs in the industry. However, Toyota is not once company but a Japanese keiretsu, a group of about 200 companies united in supplying Toyota with everything from dashboards to headlights. The network is integrated by the Toyota Production System (TPS), a collection of total quality management, just-in-time inventory systems, and concurrent engineering processes that have ben adopted by most Japanese and American firms. But Toyota�s system is different because of the close-knit family culture that supports TPS and explains why costs are kept so low to insure global competitiveness. Members of the keiretsu routinely exchange personnel, shore intellectual property, and assist each other at the cost of their own time and resources, all without the requirement of formal contracts or detailed record keeping.
One of the keiretsu members, Aisin Seiki, produces P-valves, a part that helps to prevent skidding by controlling pressure on the rear brakes. The fist-size P-valves are not complicated, but require precision manufacturing in specialized facilities using custom-designed drills and gauges because their role is so critical to safety. By 1997, Aisin was producing all but 1% of the P-valves for Toyota�s 20 plants because of its efficiency, costs, and quality. Aisin�s only P-valve manufacturing factory, the Kariya plant, produced 32,500 valves a day, and because of the success of their just-in-times system, Toyota held between four hours� and two days� worth of P-valves in stock. Production at the Kariya plant was, therefore, a critical element of Toyota�s supply chain. As Duncan Watts succinctly stated, �No factory, no P-valves. No P-valves, no brakes. No brakes, no cars.� Toyota�s general manager of production control conceded that depending on a single source and holding essentially no inventory was a calculated risk, but it also kept Toyota�s production lean.
On Saturday, February 1, 1997, the Kariya plant burned down. By 9:00 A.M., the fire had destroyed most of the factory�s 506 highly specialized machines and all the production lines for P-valves. Toyota estimated that more than two weeks would be needed just to restore a few milling machines to partial production, and six months to order new machines.
At the time, Toyota�s auto plants were operating at full capacity to meet strong domestic demand and serve the U.S. market. About 30 production lines were producing more than 15,000 cars a day. By Wednesday, all production has ceased. Across the entire Kobe industrial zone, Toyota�s own plants, and the facilities and workers supplying them, were closed. Economists estimated that Toyota�s shutdown would damage Japan�s annual industrial output by 0.1 percentage point each day. The brittleness of the system to such a relatively small failure points to the fragility of networks and networked organizations.
But the rapidity with which the system responded and recovered also points to the robustness and adaptability of networks. Although many experts thought Toyota couldn�t recover for weeks or months, its care factories started up again within five days after the fire, and by the following Thursday, 36 different suppliers, aided by more than 150 other subcontractors, had nearly 50 separate lines producing small batches of P-valves. As soon as Thursday, February 6, two of Toyota�s plants hap reopened, and by the following Monday, little more than a week after the crisis had begun, production of almost 14,000 cars a day had been restored. A week after that, the daily volume was right back at its pre-disaster level.
The speed of the recovery is especially amazing given that none of individual firms in the Toyota group that helped Aisin had had the capability to do so. Very few firms that became emergency producers of P-valves, or the firms involved indirectly as suppliers, had any prior experience making the valves, nor did they have access to the kind of specialized tools that had been destroyed in the fire. The interesting question, therefore, is not why did they stage so dramatic a recovery, but how?
Aisin and Toyota managers realized immediately that the recovery task was beyond their capabilities as an individual firm and beyond the capabilities of their immediate suppliers. A much broader effort would be required, and one over which they would have little direct control. Before the fire was out, Aisin officials organized a committee to assess the damage, notify customers, and labor unions and, following Japanese custom, visit neighbors to apologize. Over 300 cellular phones, 230 extra phone lines, and several dozen sleeping bags were ordered.
At 8:00A.M., Aisin asked Toyota to help. Kosuke Ikebuchi, a Toyota senior managing director, set up a �war room� at Toyota headquarters to direct the damage-control operation. Toyota also sent more than 400 engineers to Aisin. Later that morning, having set up an emergency response headquarters, Aisin sent out a distress call to other keiretsu members, defining the problem broadly and asking for help. Within hours, they had begun making blueprints for the valve, improvising tooling systems, and setting up make-shift production lines.
On Saturday afternoon, Toyota and Aisin invited some of their major parts suppliers to a second war room, at Aisin headquarters. It quickly became a hectic scene, with officials shouting out for copies of the blueprints of different P-valves while Toyota executives divvied up valve-making assignments. Despite the face-to-face meeting of several companies, being helpful wasn�t easy. The firms involved in the recovery effort lacked the tools and expertise specific to P-valve production. As a result, they were forced to invent novel manufacturing procedures in real time, and to solve both design and production problems simultaneously. To make matters words, Aisin�s expertise rested largely with its own processes; it was often of little help in overcoming technical obstacles. And finally, Aisin became extremely difficult to contact. Even after installing hundreds of additional phone lines, so much information was flowing in and out in the form of queries, suggestions, solutions, and new problems that the company was often unreachable, leaving the makeshift supply chain largely on its own.
Unfortunately, the capacity of this initial group of suppliers was insufficient. So Toyota purchasing officials called more parts makers to a Sunday afternoon meeting. These officials like those who had met on Saturday, were also part of the Toyota family. �It was crucial because we knew each other, we knew the face of the people,� Mr. Ikebuchi says. For example, Masakazu Ishikawa, a former Toyota manager whose division had designed Toyota P-valves, was now Executive Vice President of Somic Ishikawa Inc., a supplier of brake parts and suspension ball joints. Mr. Ishikawa called Somic�s top production engineers and asked them to meet at the office at 8:00 P.M. Sunday. They stayed there until after midnight plotting to hire out some of their current factory work to free up machines to make the Toyota parts.
At 6:00 A.M. Monday, Somic�s four designers began an eight-stage design process. Staying up 40 hours, the engineers designed jigs, and then they call in some favors from Somic�s chain of suppliers. For example, Somic got a machine-tool maker, Meiko Machinery Co., to turn down other orders and put 30 workers on round-the-clock shifts to make the jigs it needed. Somic drafted technical and administrative staffers to help man the machines. On February 6, right on schedule, it delivered its first P-valves to Toyota.
The above example provides an important glimpse into many different problem-solving and network-related activities that were taking place. Other examples included the Taiho Kogyo Co., a bearing maker that searched nationwide for special machine tools and still delivered 500 P-valves on Thursday, and Brother, a sewing a fax machine maker that had never made car parts, which spent about 500 man-hours refitting a milling machine to make just 40 valves a day.
Early in the week after the fire, even Toyota�s Mr. Ikebuchi had doubts about the goal of resuming production in all plants by Friday. But the supplier group came through. Trucks bearing the first 1000 usable P-valves rolled in late Wednesday. On Thursday, 3000 more arrived, and on Friday, 5000. Slowly, Toyota�s assembly lines started up again.
The recovery story demonstrates how all the years of experience with the TPS paid off. All the companies involved possessed a common understanding of how problems should be approached and solved. To them, simultaneous design and engineering was an everyday activity, and because Aisin knew this, they were able to specify their requirements to a minimum level of detail, allowing potential suppliers the greatest possible latitude in deciding how to proceed. Even more important, while the particular situation was unfamiliar, the idea of cooperating was not. Because many of the firms involved in the recovery effort has previously exchanged personnel and technical information with Aisin, and also with each other, they could make use of lines of communication, information resources, and socialties that were already established. They understood and trusted each other, an arrangement that facilitated not only the rapid dissemination of information (including seven descriptions of their mistakes) but also the mobilization and commitment of resources.
In effect then, the companies of the Toyota group managed to pull off two recovery efforts simultaneously. First, they redistributed the stress of a major failure from on firm to hundreds of firms, thus minimizing the damage to any one member of the group. And second, they recombined the resources of those same firms in multiple distinct and original configurations to produce an equivalent output of P-valves. They did all this with very little central direction, and almost completely in the absence of formal contracts. And they did it in just three days.
Appendix 1: Maintaining Change
EXAMPLE: Jorge, who will run the new milling machine when it arrives at Westport Industries, worries that he won�t be able to do the job without extra training, something he is resisting because a machinist certification takes several months of school. He�s been trying to decide whether to look for another job or take a continuing education course.
Continuing his education is important to Jorge, but he�s not ready yet. For one thing, his new girlfriend if bugging him because she doesn�t want him to take night classes. He feels like opposing forces are pulling at him.
Jamie, his coworker, waves him over to the far side of the machine shop. �What did you decide? Are you going to get your machinist certification so you can run the new machine?� Jamie asks.
�I�m thinking about it,� replies Jorge, �But I�m not sure I�m ready to make a job change right now. I�ve just started a good relationship with Suzette, and going back to school might mess it up.�
Jamie understands the problem and wants to help with a solution. Jorge is a smart guy, and this is too good an opportunity for him to throw away. Finally, she asks, �Jorge why don�t you make a chart of your options and list all of the changes that will happen if you take the course. Maybe you can talk to Suzette, and she�ll understand that this will be for only a short time. Tell her how much more money you can make. That should please her. Why don�t you let her select which nights you go to school? She�ll like the idea better if she helps make the decisions.�
Keeping the balance
Many people believe they are dealing with about as much change as they can take, and, yet, they know they should expect the rate of change to increase in their personal and work lives. Achieving balance between the status quo, which is familiar and more comfortable, and the requirement to work in an unpredictable environment is the primary challenge for any person who is employed today. As an individual, you�ll need to identify ways to motivate yourself to continue to change and, if you�re a team leader or supervisor, to develop methods that lead others to change when their natural reaction may be to resist.
Organizations are designed for change, but people need continuity, according to author Peter Drucker. He believes that building an environment of change that allows corporations to grow but also maintains stability for employees is the goal for every worker at all levels. This requires leadership, good communication skills, and political savvy. You can do several things to assure that change continues on your team, in your organization, or in your personal life.
1. Be fair, honest, and forthright so the people you are helping to change will trust you. If they don�t trust you, they will resist any suggestion of change. Many of the disputes between parents and teenagers management and labor, and clients and companies arise from distrust, not from the actual changes that are being undertaken.
2. Make sure the changes are reasonable. Unreasonable demands for change will be recognized immediately and vigorously resisted. In a standoff, neither party can fully win.
3. Time any changes so that the fewest number of people will be affected negatively. For example, changing company vacation schedules just before school is out of the summer would be a big mistake, as most employees and their families match trips to school breaks. Making changes in late fall would be a better plan since families would have several months to plan their next trip.
4. Reward people for making the transition to change. If the change takes something away, give something back.
5. Recognize, reward, and celebrate accomplishments so people will be motivated to attempt change again. We all change more easily when there�s something pleasant at the end.
Ongoing Change
Complacency takes less energy and involves less risk than change; therefore, without a plan, we might not make important changes. Dieting is a valuable change if you�re overweight, taking medication is essential if you�re sick, and establishing an early-to-bed, early-to-rise routine is worthwhile if you have an early schedule. Yet, without a strategy for change, you may find all of these changes difficult to sustain. If you�ve ever dieted, stopped smoking, or taken up vigorous exercise, you know that maintaining your momentum is hard.
Kurt Lewin, a psychologist, introduced several points that will help you make permanent and lasting changes. These are his criteria:
� Everyone who will be touched by a change should be actively involved in planning. Solicit ideas as early in the process as possible. No one wants to oppose something that he or she helped develop.
� The social environment has a great impact on a person�s ability to make any change. If friends, co-corkers, and acquaintances think a change is good, the affected person will embrace it more readily. Remember your days as a teenager? Were you more likely to change your hair style if your friends wore the same style?
� Change is a process that requires planning. If you allow change to happen without planning, you�ll never be in control. What a stressful way to live!
You can use Lewin�s theory, called Force Field Analysis, whether you�re deciding which of several new cars to purchase or how to change an entire organization. His method is based on identifying what will support or resist change. To understand his method, follow these steps below, using the example of making a job change.
1. Identify the driving forces that are leading you toward the change. Driving forces are actions, skills, equipment, procedures, culture, people, and other things that help you move toward the goal. Is the driving force a higher salary, desire for more responsibility, shorter commuting distance, or something else?
2. Identify the obstacles that restrain your change. These are things that can slow your progress or prevent you from reaching the goal. Does your spouse object to the change because he or she will be affected in some way? Is it hard to leave your friends? Do you fear a new job? Do you regret losing good benefits?
3. Compare the driving and restraining forces.
4. Prioritize the driving and restraining forces in order of importance. Is it more important to increase your salary or stay in close commuting distance to your home? To gain more responsibility or to keep good benefits?
Priority Order
5. Brainstorm the strategies you might use to reduce the influence of the restraining forces that may keep you from achieving a change.
� I will discuss with my spouse how this change will be good for both of us.
� I will see my work friends socially.
� I will get additional training, so I will not be afraid of taking a new job.
� I will negotiate a salary that allows me to purchase additional benefits.
6. Assign target dates by which you will accomplish the driving forces or remove or reduce the restraining forces. I will take a new job by January 1.
7. Develop specific, measurable methods for evaluating when you have been successful.
� Did I get the job?
� Does it pay a good salary?
� Is my commute short?
� Is my opinion valued?
FORCE FIELD ANALYSIS
My problem or goal:____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The driving forces leading me to change:________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The obstacles that are restraining my change:________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A comparison of my driving forces and restraints:
Driving Forces:_________________________________________________________
Restraints:_____________________________________________________________
My prioritized list of driving forces and restraints:
Driving Forces:_________________________________________________________
Restraints:_____________________________________________________________
The ways I will reduce the restraining forces:_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The dates by which I will accomplish the driving forces or remote the restraining forces:______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
How I will know when I have reached my goal or solved my problem successfully.