TOYOTA PDCA Project Management

You're not a PMP yet. What you think they do and what they actually do are two completely different things. The truth is that 90% of the time they are the ones responsible for the screw ups. Trying to quarterback projects and initiaves that they have no actual expertise in. All they do is get in the way of the actual experts, ans derail projects. Then pass the blame on to the teams they put together when they fail.
I know it's a six figure salary, and a cute acronym at the end of your email signature.
But it's a shit job, and everyone ends up hating you.
Best of luck

 

I'm a PMP and sure as hell don't have a 6 figure salary - want to get me a job? If I'm going have people hate me (which they do already) I might as well get paid better I'm currently responsible for about $400 million worth of mining equipment and engineering work so yeah. PM has a different role and responsibility in every industry and company and while the base principles are the same it doesn't always translate too well. The PMP are a nice few letters to have, but in my environment it doesn't mean shit.

My take on this discussion is that you can project manage the shit out of something and have the greatest procedures in place but it all comes down to enforcing those procedures and making sure your people follow through. Toyota is at best a matrix organization which means the PM has no real weight behind them to force the Quality or Production departments to actually do good work.

 

Which brings us right back to my original comment.
3 years ago Toyota announced that they were consolidating almost the entirety of their US operations thousands of miles away to the Midwest. Since that point there has been a mass exodus of seasoned resources that did not want to go with them.
What was left was completely overhauled and re-orged. People are in new and different roles, some in completely different functions and business units.
They are in a state of flux, a direct result of their intent to make their business stronger.
They haven't sold out, they aren't abandoning their principals, they haven't altered any of their processes that have made them successful.
Any time there's change, there's some unintended consequence, and that's all that it is.
You build a new product, there's going to be some gremlins, that's just par for the course.
They are working thru them. Maybe not at the pace or with the processes some would like to see, but that's a byproduct of the change.
All the academic discussions and off base assumptions are getting old around here.
This is supposed to be a site for enthusiasts, not a bunch of conspiracy theroriats and belly achers.
It is what it is, and continuing to bitch about it every day in every thread is t going to change anything, so build a bridge and get over it already

 

I have a cherry 1967 red convertible GTO......i will be buried with this car

 

Can't til I get my truck back. Coming up on a month.

 

I had the same Accord, bought it new (4cyl 5 speed M/T). Damn thing WAS flawless except for a corroded door switch (dome light problems). My son just bought a 01 V6 EX, just under 100K miles on it now. It's solid and runs great. Damn they're good cars.

 

I don't think most of the people on here are old enough to remember the 70's and 80's when American cars were complete sh1t and Japanese cars made great inroads to the US market because their quality control was so much better (and they were much more fuel efficient at a time it really mattered). While it didn't happen overnight, the quality (from a reliability standpoint) of "Japanese" cars started to decline not long after manufacturing moved to the USA...coincidence? Maybe. I think it was a combination of manufacturing culture differences between the US and Japan (Ironically it was the Japanese embracing Demming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming that lead to them becoming such a manufacturing force) and the increasing complexity of automobiles in general that has lead to a decline in quality in the "Japanese" offerings here in the states (particularly with Toyota and Honda). I have pretty much been a Honda Car and Toyota Truck owner for 3+ decades. I currently own both a Honda and a Toyota. They are both nice vehicles, but from a strictly reliability of intended function aspect (i.e. shit doesn't break) they are nowhere near the cars they were in the 70s, 80s and even into the 90s. At this point I don't know that there are any "great manufacturers" left from an entire corporate culture perspective, it seems like most of them are decent in general (with a few exceptions, German "reliability" in particular is GREATLY overrated) but they are all capable of turning out a disappointing product these days.

I think another issue is the complete utter focus on finalization of EVERYTHING. It used to be that manufactures (and I"m not just talking cars) would focus on the quality of any given product and the focus on quality would translate to $$$$$. Better quality = loyal customer = more sales = more $$$$ At some point this changed to focus on the $$$$ first and quality second. I think this mindset just so happened to change for good also around the time Japanese started building cars in the USA. It was a bad confluence of events I do believe It is what it is.

 

LOL at all the Project Management discussion in here.

I have a PMP... it is what it is. Cert's don't make people good at their job, and bad project managers give the term a bad name. The truth is, as part of getting the cert, you aren't supposed to accept a job or role that you know is outside your expertise. So in fact, a PM who has a PMP and is outside their wheelhouse and screwing things up is violating the PMI code of ethics, and should have the PMP removed.

But we don't exactly live in a perfect world I bet that rarely if ever actually happens.

I could (and have) nerded out pretty hard about some of the PMP stuff... at the end of the day its guidelines and if you have no common sense and are poor at communicating and working with people, nothing is going to help you.

The average salary for someone with a PMP is $78k/yr as per the glassdoor report I just googled. Some industries (IT) will pay likely much higher, some, probably lower. It's just like anything else, depends on experience. Some people like me have a PMP but aren't really a project manager, and so throw off the metric as well. FWIW anyways.

Toyota's not perfect, but none of them are.

Go drive a bailout era GM... I just bought one and subsequently needed to put a new tranny in it way before I would have ever thought I should have.

 

agree with your assessment.....the Toyota quality has been suffering since manufacturing started in the US......probably some union issues added to the problems and the american attitude of entitlement

 

No argument here.

Thank you for your detailed post. I'm in my late 20's so the 70-80s are lost on me. However, I do remember the craze for Nissan 240s and 300s, Celicas and Supras, preludes and civics, etc.

 

I'm just curious where your insight on Toyota's North America manufacturing comes from?

 

Good for you.