On July 19th, I read in the Wall Street Journal: "Last week, Toyota said it would have to temporarily shut down all 12 of its domestic plants after Riken Corp., a supplier of $1.50 piston rings, was damaged by the 6.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Japan on July 16. "..."Toyota said it would resume production at most plants on July 19th, but said the interruption would delay the delivery of 55,000 vehicles."
I read "the Goal" during the vacation this year, a fascinating novel dealing with the Theory of Constraints. In essence, the book describes how a plan-manager improves his plant by focusing on reducing inventory and operating cost and throughput. It turns out that nothing moves faster than his bottle-necks, and by using all his energy to reduce bottlenecks, he is able to speed up production. It made me think of the health-care system, of traffic-jams, and of course, of the JazzCode.
According to the WSJ article and one blog-post, it turns out that Riken Corporation, with $630M in annual revenues (nothing by by car-industry standards) is an extremely important link in the global car-industry chain. When the quake shut down Riken, it affected most of the car-manufacturer in Japan including, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Honda and Nissan. Riken provides piston rings for 50% of all cars made in Japan and 20% of cars world-wide, including cars for Ford, BWM and Volkswagen.
How you can tell if a team isn't working? The jazzcode is very clear: the worst thing you can do in a jazz context is to drag, play out of time, out of tune or play on the wrong harmonies. Of these, the failure to keep up with the rest of the band is the worst; it will force the entire band to slow down. If your part is crucial the music might fall apart, and I think this is what happens in teams and value-chains as well; if one of the parts slow down or is out of sync with the groove, then the entire output slows down and the entire team becomes a bottle-neck.
When one team-member overloads on information or on tasks or has been given a job outside their competency, the natural tendency is to slow down in order to "get it right". But if you are in a real-time (or Just-in-time as Toyota calls it) environment, then your individual perfection -- doing it right leads to dragging. And nothing kills teamwork more than slowing down.
How does the JazzCode address dragging? In order to avoid dragging you play less, and you make sure you only play stuff that you have fully internalized. Only when you can play your part without any hesitation will you be able to play it at the right tempo. Alternatively, start the song at a slower tempo or chose a different song.
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