Roots of Lean 2010 is taking place next week. This week we are in Tokyo to prepare the trip, get over the jetlag and inhale a little japanese culture. Yesterday we went to a Sumo Stable to see the wrestlers train in the morning. My respect for Sumo Wrestling is now in a completely different place than it was before. To see the combination of strength, speed, tactics and flexibility in these big guys was impressive.
The serious stuff:Every year we spend plenty of time to create a tour where we will se many different companies and get new angles to what lean really is about. The two last years, it was part of the program to meet with managers from Toyota, besides seeing the plant, in order to ask questions and dive deeper into what we had seen. Last year we were lucky to meet Mr. Ishii - General Project Manager for Toyotas Software Division. We had two very intense hours with him, where he openly shared how Toyota develops software, and what challenges they have. Recently Henrik Kniberg, from Crisp wrote
this interesting account of that meeting.
This year we are not going to talk to managers from Toyota. They are too busy with other stuff - Instead we are going to meet a truckload of other fascinating companies and people. Starting Monday wíth a visit to the Leading manufacturer of Industrial Robots - Fanuc at the foot of Mount Fujii.
Stay tuned on this channel next week to read more.
By Bent Jensen