John Seddon: Watch out for the tool heads

Everything you need to know about lean manufacturing tools and why they won’t work in service organisations I gained an antipathy to change by tools training and projects in the early Eighties while studying TQM programmes that failed. In essence the theory in the toolbox was diametrically opposed to the theory of the firm, so what would you expect to happen? Of course people do get improvements with tools but these are insignificant when compared to the benefits from changing the system, as Deming and others observed and as Taiichi Ohno proved beyond doubt.

By John Seddon