Implementing Boyd?

Can Boyd's principles be really implemented in business? Chet Richards talks about that in excellent article.

This part:

That is, if the employees didn’t commit to making the system work, it wouldn’t move at all. The Toyota Way is why they do it for Toyota and don’t for most other manufacturing companies. The other important point about the Toyota Way is that the system is always getting better at whatever it does. As one Toyota exec put it, whatever we do this year is baseline for next year. A lot of companies talk continuous improvement (kaizen), but few achieve it. Their organizational climate is why.

got me thinking about blog few blog posts in couple lean blogs.

Ron Pereira of Lean Six Sigma Academy is on study tour in Japan currently and he wrote about spark plug factory where people have perfected their flow to the point that they don't even need kanban cards or similar accessories to help them control the process. How could this be achieved without highly motivated and committed workforce?

On similar note in Evolving Excellence Dan Markovitz wrote a piece about respect for people. He attendet LEI summit and there one of the speakers claimed that:

Everyone at these conference focuses on tools like value stream mapping and 5S. But the tools are only 25% of the story. Lean is about peple, not about waste. Focus on the employees -- all other benefits are just by-products.

And that kinda rings a bell with motivated, committed workforce creating great results.