“EARN the right to AUTOMATE!” — Toyota UK’s Paul Blahyj | Lean Made Simple

We build 600 vehicles a day. Every time that person builds a vehicle, they can look for improvements. We can't do that with machines. The equipment will do what you ask it to do. It won't improve that situation.

Welcome to Lean Made Simple, a podcast for people who want to transform their business and their lives one step at a time. Today we're at TMUK and we've got the chance to sit down with Paul Blage, a lean manufacturing coach with TMUK. How did you end up at Toyota? What's your story?

Ah, well, yeah, so I've been at Toyota just over 26 years now. I played ice hockey as a kid and I kind of went to play professional ice hockey until I was 20. And then I met my... uh wife to be and the money wasn't so good uh so i decided to finish at 20 and uh look for a job elsewhere i started off here as an operator on the shop floor on door line where we made doors

I moved around the shop, so Troy would like to do that to kind of get your skill set. So I kind of stayed as a member for 10 years or so. And then Troy would do what Troy would do in terms of how they develop the people. They moved me into a project role.

where I was in charge of designing some processors. Well, my team was in charge of designing the processor for the Corolla launch into the assembly shop. And then I also moved on after that into some... time and labor study so we'd go to some lines do some time and labor some study to make the processes more efficient again to develop me as a person as an individual giving me some skills that i had when i first started this job came up

Just over 18 months ago, I'd never heard of where I'm working today, which is a TLMC, Totally Management Centre. Never heard of it. But when I looked at what type of thing it was doing, working with external companies, it's really something that interested me. So I applied for the job. and luckily i ended up getting the job uh just september last year yeah so toyota has given you the opportunity to come in working on the floor to rise up to the leadership position you're in today yes and i think

And again, it's kind of humbling, isn't it? If you really think back at 26 years ago, I was doing this. Never in my wildest dreams would I be dreaming of doing what I'm doing in this job. It's a privilege. You never come to work, look at the clock. You only look at the clock so you think, is that the time today's gone so fast? So I think that's real good. It's a real good thing that you wake up looking forward to.

to come into work. Something really like yesterday or on the last day we were here as well was the path that everybody can see a very clear path within Toyota for where they can go and it's very visual.

If you want to progress, this company will progress you. They will develop you. Every member has an opportunity. And again, working in some companies that I've been lucky enough to work in within the last year, I'm not so sure that's... everywhere so if you when you come in here as a member you know that your job is to build vehicles but as you progress through your career little doors open for you to progress elsewhere you know if you think of

I was employed. My wife had put this application form in to me to get employed to build a car. I never thought I'd be stood up here like last week standing in front of you guys and girls in the role I'm in coaching. When you think about it, it's kind of mind-blowing. That every person who comes in the door has that opportunity. And I use the example I used with you yesterday. So our executive vice president at TME, Marvin Cook. So he's the second highest guy in the whole of Europe.

started at Toyota Burniston as an engineer. He's progressed his way through the ranks. That's what this company does. You said yesterday you were talking about the difference between internally promoting and externally hiring. Could you... Kind of let us peek behind the curtain of how Toyota thinks about that. Yeah, so in manufacturing, our strong preference is to develop our people, to be leaders within our people. And what we mean by that, we're all about the culture, the Toyota way.

And yes, in the past we've externally hired people, and there's been some very successful people who are still at the company. But there's also a proportion of those people who got externally hired into manufacturing roles who weren't so successful. And the reason that is, in my opinion, is that the culture, they've not been through that culture. You know, I speak about if you're a member and then you fast forward 20 years until you're managing people.

I don't think they give you high fives or throw his rose petals down, but when you're sitting in front of him talking about what their job is... they know you've done it and i think that really holds a lot of water and i think again that's what we do so to answer question yes in the past we've externally hired into manufacturing we still externally are now into non-manufacturing areas

But in manufacturing, our preference is to develop our people within in order to grow the business. They've lived and breathed it however long they've been here. Why wouldn't you do that? Yeah. This is just an aside, but why do you call people that work here members? We've had a comment before, but it's kind of friendly, isn't it? Operator's almost robotic. Member, it's a softer adjective. It's something that people can relate to. I'm managing director.

richard is a member and the guy or girl who's putting bolts into a into a door on door line is a member we're all one unit we're all one family we all wear the same work we're we're distinguished by a name

you know you'll see why do you know your people's name you asked me earlier well it's on it's on here if i'm going around and i glance i'll try and remember so next time i see him i can have that hello and use that person's name it's a really small thing but it goes a long way i always remember an old

boss. You'll remain nameless. And one day he'd say hello, and the next day he'd walk straight past you. The day you walk straight past you, it makes you think, is the guy upset? Have I done something to accept him? If you smile and say hello to everybody.

It's only going to go a lot further than if you walk past them. Yeah, it's amazing. You said something yesterday that was really interesting. You said we have to earn the right to digitize. Could you maybe expand on that and what that means? Yeah, so we flip-flop between being the number one world's leading motor manufacturer, and luckily we are in terms of sales. So we do digitize, of course we do. We haven't got slates and paper everywhere you look.

But we strongly believe part of the territory is Genshi Genbutsu, go look, see, understand, consents. And we believe by having a paper trail, that promotes that. If we are sat, and some businesses do, and you have everything...

electrified and everything's at a button and you can see all your business in front of you that's great but in experiences that i've seen in some businesses you'll see a bit of a red on the screen they'll make a phone call and say what's going on if we see some red on a screen because we do have screens We go out. Let's go and talk to the people. Let's understand what problem is. Let's understand.

what support they require to solve the problems. So yes, you'll go into a similar stuff as I saw yesterday and there's big screens and it's lots of noise and it sounds like an amusement arcade, some people say, but also there's a really strong paper trail because you can touch and you can feel.

And it promotes conversation if you go to a board and there's paper on the board. So that's kind of what I mean by earning the right to digitise. And in years to come, maybe, we'll be all digital. And I know there's a strong push in certain sectors of business. to go digital yeah we make a conscious decision at toyota to stay paperwork because it promotes it kind of feeds the toyota way yeah it's obviously working anyway

Yeah, I think so. I know so, without sounding too arrogant. So say in terms of automation versus manual work, where is the balance there with Toyota? How does Toyota stand with that? So I think there's some process. So you look at our weld operation, it's very highly...

uh automated with robots it's difficult to get a human to weld with efficiency and with quality if you look at our paint shop it's highly automated the spraying paints onto a vehicle it kind of um not so not such a right thing to do to kind of get a human to do that in terms of um from a business perspective but when we looked in assembly yesterday one of your guys said wow

There's a lot of people. Your people build vehicles. And I said to the person, I think I said to you, I said to you, Matt, I said, we have equipment. We have to have equipment in certain quarters. The thing with equipment is... The equipment will do what you ask it to do. It won't improve that situation. If you put people on a process, they will look to improve the process. You can't buy that. So I suppose the answer to the question is if I've got people or we've got people on a process.

And they're building that process. We build 600 vehicles a day, 300 on per shift. Every time that person builds a vehicle, they can look for improvements. We can't do that with machines. Now in time, maybe we'll progress and be more automated. But at this point in time, the right thing that we believe is let's get the people, because the people are the most important thing, and they'll get the process. Machines can't improve themselves.

Yeah, amazing. So I read recently that Toyota isn't the best car manufacturer in the world. They're the best manufacturer in the world. And one of the things that really surprised us yesterday when we were walking around, we were just chatting about it last night, is the humility.

at every level of this organization. You were showing us things where you're still, you've still problems with or things you're still working on that you haven't solved yet. And you're really open about it. Where does that humility come from? I think it's, we speak about culture. And again, we've had some conversations over the last couple of weeks. We're a vast organization. So the way that we manage our culture.

is by talking about the people, something as small as member. When you come into the company, you're not a number, you're Paul Blodge.

member number four four eight four you're a member we're all members when you're all when we're all classed as a member it's your start point and then you come with the the work way honestly speaking this isn't compulsory to wear there's nothing in our terms and conditions that say all members must wear workwear it's voluntary have you ever seen did you see anybody who's not got it on nobody absolutely not and that shows you're part of the the culture here

That's where humility comes in. You get it as soon as you step into the door. You know, one of the ladies last week, and again, I know we spoke about it yesterday. When you come into the assembly shop, the word this lady used was intimidating. You can be intimidated by the size. by the sounds by the smells it engages all five of your senses but you remember you've got one of these on you're going out there with guys and girls who've been there years and years and years

and they make you feel welcome. It's hard not to get swept away by the tidal wave of humanity or humility, should I say. So that's kind of the answer to your question is it's here and you get pulled along with it.

Let's be honest. We talk about being honest and perfect. Of course, we have people who leave because it's not for them. Car manufacturing isn't easy. Working shifts isn't easy. Working in an office environment, supporting car manufacturing, it isn't easy. So yes, of course, people leave. But the nine guys who work for us in this department have all been here 25 years plus. It's loyalty. It must hold some.

some water somewhere and again the last thing I'll say is remember when we went into assembly yesterday and I showed you those walls the 15 to 19 year peoples who served the 20 to 25 years who people served and the 25 to 30 years that people served it's there for everybody to see and that's only going to

grow and that itself should say this is a good company to work for because look how many people have been here for so long yeah you guys do something really paradoxical and i don't know if i understood this right yesterday but did you say at one point that

It's the leader's job to actually remove processes from the line. And in turn, that removes the amount of people working on the line. But then you don't just, like maybe another company, throw those people away. It's like, oh, we don't need you anymore. You then redeploy these people elsewhere. So one of the... We're here to improve right so part of the Toyota way is to continue to improve to continuously Kaizen and we don't like to

We don't make people redundant as a company, okay? We've never made anybody compulsory redundant at TMUK. We've also got a business to run, and part of business is efficiency, is cost-saving. So we will have teams who will go to lines and they'll study lines and they'll do some work with the line. So we don't just do it kind of as a project group doing it to a line. We'll go to the line, work with the group to look at making processes more efficient, which will in turn maybe throw...

some additional headcount that we can redeploy to other areas that we need it. And a really good example of that is that we spoke about yesterday, the BRC, the Business Revenue Centre. That's growing so fast. So we've got to kind of get lots of experience over there because it's a new area. It's okay to have some agency people there, but we need some realised skill set. You can't hire in the skill set, so you have to look at what you've got within.

So one of the ways that we look at getting some skill is by redeploying. How do we redeploy it? Let's go to a process, let's do some study, let's make efficient. Mr. or Mrs. A can go into BRC and strengthen that organization. So you'll actually use improvements? as a way to free up more people within the organization to go to where they needed to go? Yes.

That is crazy. This isn't easy. It's not easy to do. Because as we evolve, we've been here 32 years now, and the process has become very efficient, very efficient, very efficient. And again, this all comes back to this cultural thing. You go to some SMEs, honestly speaking.

and you'll do some Kaizen opportunity, or they'll do some Kaizen opportunity within the business, this person knows that they might be out of a job, right? So therefore, they're not going to be able to, they're not going to take part in this Kaizen process, because they're going to be worried that they're not going to be able to pay the mortgage.

We know our people. The people know that when we come, okay, they might be redeployed, but they've got a job. And that's the kind of, again, we keep talking about culture. It's one of these cultural things. You don't meet barriers when you go to that line to work with their people to make their processes efficient.

Because now they've got a job. One of the questions I had before coming here two weeks ago was, because I've read it in all the books, there's been thousands of books written on Toyota. And in all the books, it says that every single person continuously improves. And I was like, do they really? Do they actually improve? But you actually answered my question yesterday when you said, I think it's two Kaizans per month that every member.

has to do. And it is unbelievable that every single person, like it says in the books, every single person is, they do have that Kaizen mindset. They're always looking for tiny incremental improvements. And we've seen it happening yesterday.

How do you encourage 2,500 people to come up with improvements every month? It's a good question. So we have what we call setting our people our expectation. If you don't set expectation to your people... you'll get some variable results back. So if I say to you three guys who are in front of me now, go Kaizen. You might come back with five, you might come back with one, and this guy might say, I ain't got a clue what Kaizen is.

If you say to the people, your job is to raise a minimum two Kaizen per month as members, your team leader, please coach these people and give the people the time and the opportunity to raise two Kaizans per month. And group leader, which is at my level, please give the team leader and coach the team leader the time for the members to do these two karsans per month. It's all three levels of the organization.

It holds more water if the member knows that his team leader or the lady knows that his team leader is going to be supporting them, the group leader is going to support them, and ultimately my boss will support them in that as well. So it's all about this kind of... a layered confirmation, a layered support system we have in place. And again, honestly speaking, at times it's difficult to get two and a half thousand people raise cards. And honestly speaking, will everybody raise two a month?

Absolutely not. I'll be lying and sitting there saying, but if you don't set the expectation... Of your minimums, you raise it to a month, you've not got no start point for development or coaching your people. I must add that the vast majority of people raise a minimum to a month. And that mindset's here, the challenge here, again, part this road away.

But if you don't set the expectation, you're only going to get a lower result than if you're setting on. You shared a really crazy stat yesterday about the number of people that work at Toyota versus other car manufacturers. Are you able to share that? I can't share the car manufacturer because that'd be unfair. But we use possibly a third less people than one of our greatest rivals do.

to build similar vehicles, a similar number. They heard less. That's crazy, isn't it? And I think it's the members. And then it's kind of like if you use an analogy of a football or soccer team, the football players are the ones who make it happen. When you interview football or soccer players, they talk about the tea lady in the tea room, right? It's part of the...

Bigger team. So the guys and girls are building the car. Of course, they're the bread and butter. They're adding value to the business. But the support people, you know, when we went onto the shop floor yesterday, we went to the up and over kit that we'll see through your video. It was broken down. The members were there helping, but they had the guys who built that.

They're with them, supporting them. They don't just walk away. In some businesses, they'll build you a piece of equipment. I've gone. I'm going to move on to the next thing. Richard, the group leader in his team, was there yesterday supporting that member with an issue he had with equipment.

it's all back to that culture again this person knows if something breaks someone's going to come to help me i'm not going to be left on my own yeah and that it's kind of one of the one of the many things that make you want to work here because you feel that people want to help

When you come over next month for the Lean Made Simple Tour, you'll meet this guy called Paddy. And Paddy's famous for doing the work of seven men in the woodworking department. I felt like yesterday I met about 20 Paddy. You know, like the dashboards, like the way the dashboards are being made.

and watch this one woman build for probably like 10 minutes. And I'm just like, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then she clicks something with her foot and it flips around. You're just kind of like, this is so, so, so efficient. It's remarkable. And you've got to think, because, again, it took a while for this penny to drop for me.

These people, in their own way, are craftspeople. They know how to build a vehicle. You look at them people yesterday, they're highly skilled individuals. This lady, I saw you watching, her hands are going like hummingbird's wings.

But she's in control. She knows what she's doing. Of course, when she goes home, she knows she's had a shift because it isn't easy to build vehicles. But they're all there. They're committed. They want to do the best for the company. Again, I keep coming back to it. Probably overemphasize it, but it's part of this. cultural thing that we have here.

So, Paul, this has been unbelievable. The tour yesterday when I was here two weeks ago, my mind was absolutely blown. I couldn't sleep last night. My head was going at 100 miles per hour. I could tell that when you WhatsApp me at quarter past 11.

So for somebody watching this, you know, Toyota and the TPS and the Toyota Oasis, really complicated system. How can a business owner watching this implement these tools within their organization? The most important part for me of implementing Lean into any business of any size is the leaders. If the leaders don't do it, you ain't got a chance.

There's some really good, strong organizations that we've got. There's one down in South Wales. One of your friends, Oliver Conger, he's a managing director of the business. is people are bought into it because he's so enthusiastic about it. One thing that we see is people of leaders will say, I'm going to send 20 people on a course to Toyota.

They'll do lean. They'll come back. I've ticked the box. I've done lean. And they'll leave it to it. So these people have been over here and they've lived and breathed it for a couple of days or five days, however long they come. And they go back really enthusiastic because the boss hasn't been.

He or she, the boss, well, we've ticked this lean box. I'm just going to sit back and wait what happens. What happens then is that the people have no sense of direction. We're not setting that standard. We're not setting the expectation. They fall away because they've been on a course enthusiastic to think the boss don't care. What does the boss do? This lead? I've sent them on a course and not even do it. I'm never going to bother with it. And you see that in so many businesses.

So I suppose the short answer is the boss has got to believe, understand, drive and support the organisation to take them on the journey and not put them on a bus to come to Toyota to get back and expect it to be intermented because it definitely won't be.

Yeah, and I think that's why TLMC is so powerful because it's a five-month programme, isn't it? So yeah, there's a number of programmes at TLMC, Totally Management Centre. So you can come on site and have some short-term training and take that back into your business.

comes at a lower level understanding of lean to kind of a developed level of lean and then we're looking at a course that's over a six-month period where you have some interaction with Toyota coaches so you'll come on to this site the vehicle plant in Derby or the

engine plant in D-side for three separate occasions. And then the coaches, the nine of us, will spread the time and we'll come into the organisation and your organisations or the company's organisations for five separate visits. At the end of that then...

through your start off the journey having a problem and working on a problem with the coach. At the end of it, you give some output presentation in terms of how you're going to take that into your business. So it's okay being coached and being developed. But as a business, you also want some output. Your output will then gauge where you've come as and where you're, most importantly, understand where you want to drive your next focus in the business. Because lean...

Never stops. I hate the phrase, we've done lean. We've tried lean. Lean isn't a system, it's a culture for me. So people say, yeah, we've done lean. No, you've not. Lean is a continued journey forever. And again, this is only the first stepping stone. of that lean journey is is the possibility of

of coming here to season and is helping you. So if you're liking what you're hearing from Paul and you'd like to learn more about lean or go on a deep dive on your lean journey, I would really recommend clicking the link below and visit the TLMC website and implement lean.

into your organization. I think it's such a powerful thing that you're doing, Paul. Thank you. And really appreciate your time here today on the podcast. Thank you. Really good to have you here. Thank you. Thanks, Paul. Magic. Thank you.