Healthcare can learn from Toyota’s sticky gas pedal
For the past ten years (an aggressive estimate) healthcare has been trying to learn from Toyota’s lauded Toyota Production System. Applying Lean (TPS was the precursor to Lean) principles has made healthcare safer.
But Toyota is now offering another learning opportunity (though this one negative). The company that built its reputation upon the ideals of quality is feeling the pain of a sticky gas pedal that forced Toyota to cease new car sales and issue a recall of millions more. An image Toyota so meticulously crafted, an image it relied upon in unseating General Motors as the world’s largest auto manufacturer almost exactly one year ago, is now in question.
And some are blaming it on their push for growth. The New York Times:
Toyota executives set an ambitious goal in 2002 to own 15 percent of the global auto industry by 2010, meaning it would surpass General Motors as the world’s largest carmaker. To get there, it would have to grow by 50 percent. It would have to build new plants in the United States, China, and elsewhere in Asia, and introduce dozens of new models.
Toyota managed to win bragging rights as the world’s biggest car company. But that focus on rapid growth appears to have come at a cost to its reputation for quality, creating an opportunity for others to potentially take back market share they lost to Toyota.
Did Toyota ignore quality concerns in its quest to become number one? Evidence points toward yes. The Los Angeles Times:
The automaker has had difficulties explaining why it didn’t address these problems sooner, considering the fact that it conducted a floor mat recall in 2007, and revealed in a filing to federal regulators that it first detected a problem with sticking pedals nearly three years ago.
Toyota’s mea culpa now demands nothing but transparency. Transparency that is going to cost the company customers, inflict major damage to its reputation, and result in a host of lawsuits.
I’d venture to guess that the vast majority of hospital strategic plans include growth as a major goal. That growth goal usually translates into increased volume. But as the Toyota situation reveals, growth at any cost can have a perilous outcome. It is so vitally important to grow intelligently (read: quality means quality each and every time) lest you be subjected to the wrath Toyota is experiencing.
Toyota’s problem seems to a show a lack of understanding of how to scale their production to achieve optimal quality and not thinking hard enough about the impact of potential failure on the brand.
Quite simply, [Toyota’s brand was] important, but not important enough to be front and center of the CFO and CEOs agenda.
