Crises, if managed well, bring opportunities.
Did you know that in Japanese the word crisis actually means dangerous luck?
It is pronounced "kiki". Although it translates as crisis, it is spelled with the characters danger and chance next to each other. So in short, the meaning of crisis is "Dangerous Chance"
In other words, according to the Japanese management approach, crises are processes with risks but also with the potential to create new opportunities. Being affected by a crisis or creating a new opportunity is all about how you manage the process.
Taiichi Ohno: the world needed a big shock like the oil crisis to realize Toyota.
His quote actually summarizes the concept of dangerous luck in a nutshell.
When the development process of TPS is examined in detail, it is evident that all the methods included in it were developed in response to the economic bottlenecks encountered or the problems posed by competition. With this in mind, Kaizen looks at crises as opportunities and envisages fighting crises instead of fearing them. Crises bring economic bottlenecks. The main issue that every company focuses on in economic problems is to reduce costs. Here, focusing on the production method instead of focusing on the cost items in the basic inputs will eliminate all unnecessary labor and activities and will automatically reduce the costs of basic inputs. So what are these opportunities? As we can give many examples, let's examine the following examples.
| Impact of the Crisis | In-Production Impact | Opportunity Point |
| Increased cost per product due to fixed labor costs | Flexible line structure to meet fluctuations in production and to employ only as many personnel as needed | |
| Increased processing time of the product due to inter-process transportation, increased non-value-added business costs due to transfer processes | Increasing the rate of value-added work by reducing transportation and intermediate stocks with sequential processes | |
| Decrease in revenue due to decrease in sales volume | Unnecessary inflation of costs through repair and quality control processes | Ensuring that quality is produced, not controlled, by developing on-site quality practices |
| Failure to fill the capacity of the equipment that has not yet covered the cost of the investment made, Failure of the machines to offer added value | Development of compact equipment, enabling the production of as much as needed with a minimum amount of personnel. | |
| Costs due to ineffective use of time as a result of unplanned downtime such as breakdowns, type changes, etc. | 6 Daily monitoring of Major Loss, Proactive maintenance, initiation of rapid model changeover and conversion of passive time to active time | |
| Personnel who cannot see problems, are constantly absent and cannot ensure their own job security | To distinguish between abnormal and normal situations by focusing on training management, to train personnel who can take a proactive approach against occupational accidents |
When we do not accept the problems in front of us and see them as obstacles to be overcome, each problem will provide an extra output to our management processes.
While TPS argues that problems will always exist in the field and therefore the struggle should never be abandoned, our country's companies unfortunately accept the problems in front of the eyes and expect to live with the problems and somehow solve these problems. Against the changing environment, economic structure and bottlenecks, we need to learn to get rid of all kinds of crises and create a chance from danger. The primary criterion for this is to accept that kaizen is a basic need and to never give up the spirit of struggle.
Remember that if you see 10 cm obstacles as a big problem in your fight against waste, you will always give up at the first obstacle and get stuck in the danger of the crisis. You must learn to overcome obstacles and develop your team and teach them to overcome walls that are not 10 cm but 10 m.
We wish you success in your fight against crises.
