The Toyota Production System for Software  |  May 28, 2008  

Recently, an IEEE Spectrum podcast featured a Q&A session with Clayton Christensen, the author of the Innovator's Dilemma. Even though this book is over 10 years old, it still is thought provoking.

In the interview, Clayton discusses how some of his work and work of his previous students is being used to reduce costs and capital expenditure in the semiconductor manufacturing space. He mentions how the use of standard design libraries will decrease the value placed on design, and increase the value of effectively run semiconductor fabs that can run small volumes with a reduced lead-time.

There are 4 principles:

Rule 1: All work shall be highly specified as to content, sequence, timing, and outcome.

Rule 2: Every customer-supplier connection must be direct, and there must be an unambiguous yes-or-no way to send requests and receive responses.

Rule 3: The pathway for every product and service must be simple and direct.

Rule 4: Any improvement must be made in accordance with the scientific method, under the guidance of a teacher, at the lowest possible level in the organization.

It made me wonder about the effect of applying these principles to the software services industry, especially when we move into an age of virtual machines, industry standard frameworks and Service oriented architectures using model based development. It seems like these approaches would work in this domain as well. The business implications may be similar too.

Charlie Bess
EDS' Next Big Thing Blog