Welcome to the A3 Thinking Blog
Welcome to the A3 Thinking Blog. From time to time the authors of A3 Thinking will post articles or updates pertaining to the book A3 Thinking. Drop by and visit when you have free time or send the authors a question. As time allows they’ll take turns answering whatever is submitted.
Hello Art and Prof. Sobek!
Welcome to the world of blogging. Congratulations on a great book. I have enjoyed your many excellent past articles and hope that both of you find time to continue contributing brief articles on your blog for the benefit of everyone.
Greetings Jon,
Jon,
Thanks for the visit, feedback, and link to the site. I doubt we will ever be as prolific as gembapantarei but we hope to answer some questions and provide some insights on A3 Thinking from time to time!
Regards,
Art Smalley / Durward Sobek
Welcome to the blog world! I’ll definitely add you to my blog roll and will be interested in what you have to say.
Our Business Unit (Visual Simulation Systems) has begun the lean journey. We are not a strong mfg. site but deal with a visual software presentation and have computer/projector displays that we assemble then, place our software on. Our journey has progressed to the implementation of A3 Thinking. We use your book extensively (in conjunction with, “Managing to Learn” and “Getting the Right Things Done”). My question concerns what your observations are of the Toyota Production System today versus what is was when all these “books” were written or have based their context on. I have no contact with the internal workings of Toyota but have heard from some second hand sources that A3’s are nonexistent. Not that problems are NOT being solved but since the TPS has matured after 40+ years it seems logical that the quantity of A3 applications would diminish (since variation is diminishing) and not be as widespread as at the beginning. Your observations would help.
Thanks,
Dave
Dave,
Thanks for the message and comments. Good luck on your implementation of A3 Thinking. Regarding Toyota’s current usage I have a slightly different take on the situation. A3 reports in the traditional sense in Toyota (Hand drawn 1 page A3 paper type) are on the decline in Toyota and have been for quite a few years. The real reason though I think is the influx of information technology and computers into the work site. Most software packages are not geared towards formatting A3 (or U.S. sized 11×17 inch) type documents. Word is great for text, Excel is fairly good at data and charts, PowerPoint is reasonably good at single page slides and charts, etc. However they are not great at A3 reports and combining all three types into one document is a chore…
The trend even in Toyota is to use e-mail and software packages for communication and presentation purposes. Does this mean that A3 reports are “dead”? I’d argue not really since the thinking pattern behind the reports and activities surrounding the A3 process are still in place. We title our book on A3 reports “A3 Thinking” for this reason. It is the thinking pattern that matters the most and not adherence to using a single sheet or piece of paper. I often advise clients that six or seven Powerpoints slides for example containing some form of Background, Current State, Root Cause, Goal, Action Items, Confirmation of Effect, and Follow Up, etc. are an acceptable A3 report to me these days…as long as the thinking pattern, logic structure, and quality of analysis is good. The downside is of course looking at 6-7 pages instead of one.
An example of a problem solving report at the team level is the 20 slide presentation I posted on a recent QC circle activity from Toyota. It still contains the critical thinking pattern…it is just much much longer than reports in the past and uses a lot more computer generated images.
QC Circle Example of Problem Solving & Elements of A3 Thinking
Hello, David,
It’s nice to hear from an organization that is trying to make system-wide improvements rather than compartmentalized application of lean tools. I wish you the best.
One of things you’re running up against in terms of acquiring current information is the lead-time needed to get something published. One to three years is typical. For our book, for example, from the date Art and I approached the publisher with a book proposal to the date the book was released was nearly two years. And the data that formed the basis for the book was collected even earlier. So I’m not surprised that you would have difficulty finding information in print about what Toyota is doing right now. Unfortunately, I have not personally had contact with Toyota insiders in recent years, so I am not able to answer your question as to whether A3’s are still widely used. I can only speculate. Also, my window into the company was in product engineering, so it is limited.
What I do know is that Toyota is still dedicated to application of continuous improvement daily. A3 reports are simply a tool to do CI effectively. It is well-known that structured problem-solving outperforms unstructured problem-solving, which it one of the reasons why A3’s are useful; but I’m sure there are other tools/methods that are as effective. So it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that they’ve evolved past A3’s to some other tool/method they feel is more effective. Electronic media are not very conducive to the A3 format, so they may be using something else more pervasively in its place in order to appeal to the wired (and now wirelessly connected) generation. Continuous improvement, right?
At the same time, the blank stares could be in how you ask the question. The terms we used in the book, such as “A3 process,” are our terms, not Toyota’s. So it could just be they aren’t sure what you are asking simply by the terms you’ve used.
Maybe you already did this, but if I were you, I would query your contacts about continuous improvement, how they go about it, what tools they use, what training they’ve received, what kind of mentoring they’ve received, and so forth. Starting from a more general topic of common ground may be more fruitful. I’ve heard second-hand that during their high-growth period over the last decade or so in pursuit of surpassing GM to be the largest car company in the world that some of the basics have slid, such as one-on-one mentoring. They grew faster than the labor intensive method of growing highly capable problem-solvers that they’ve used historically could keep up with. If your contacts are American managers, this may especially be true.
Sorry I don’t have hard data for you. I wish you the best as you move forward to improving operational effectiveness by getting every person to solve important problems every day.
Sincerely,
Durward Sobek