Later in life, I studied manufacturing and became aware of strategies
in the automotive industry. ‘The Machine That Changed the World’ was a book by
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which introduced ‘The Toyota Way’.
Of the fourteen principles in the Toyota Production System one
is Heijunka. It means work levelling. It is something we have previously tried implementing
to reduce response times when processing customer information.
Finally with our new Duty Manager system it seems Heijunka
is working for us. In hindsight all we needed was to think bigger and bolder in
the implementation. With it in place we can go further and implement the 5S philosophy.
