September 09, 2025

TPS Taken to Companies across the UK

49 minutes

Simon Rowley and Julian Ball join Josh Howell, LEI President, and Mark Reich, LEI Chief Engineer Strategy, and continue this month’s discussion about the role of continuous improvement (CI) groups in lean management. Simon is Senior Manager at the Toyota Lean Management Centre (TLMC) in the UK, and Julian is Section Manager. TLMC was started by Toyota Motor Manufacturing UK in 2009 to support companies in the UK interested in implementing the Toyota Production System (TPS).

The two TLMC executives describe the startup of the center and how it initially enabled Toyota UK to employ and improve staff during a financial downturn. “They saw this as an opportunity for development of their own people, going out to clients and helping them and coaching them in TPS and the Toyota Way, develop them to then go rotate back into the business and make our business stronger,” says Julian. The best way to get better at TPS, adds Simon, is to practice, and TLMC offers team members opportunities to practice with diverse industries, people, problems, and environments.

On the podcast Simon and Julian also talk about:

Training programs they bring to clients in the UK, including Rolls Royce, and their work in industries beyond manufacturing, such as healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and high tech. “The thinking way can be implemented into all of these sectors,” says Julian.

The approach of TLMC team members with clients compared to staff at Toyota’s internal CI group, the Operations Management Development Division (OMDD): “When we’re here at Toyota and having a discussion about TPS, it’s OK to assume that everyone has some level of knowledge and you can start using terms and think of activities you’re going to do and everybody is kind of on the same page,” notes Simon. “If you go to an external enterprise, first of all you have to change the way you communicate to people.”

Advice for companies new to TPS and wanting to get started with improvements: get at least some advice from a lean expert, don’t get too ambitious when starting with lean, begin small in an area and with people who have expressed an interest in lean improvements, make sure of who needs to be on board to make it work, and don’t worry about getting it wrong.

People development and TPS: “Unless you’re developing your people in your organization, you’ll never maximize the potential of TPS, you’ll get just little bits of improvement,” says Simon.

The importance of standardized work: “Standardized work allows us to build high-quality vehicles safely every single cycle,” say Julian. “The other part of that is it’s the members’ safety net. We’ll train you how to do something and, of course, if you do it this way every single time you will stay safe and you will build that quality vehicle. We’re avoiding any of these conflicts of who did it wrong and why didn’t you do it like this. We just follow the standardized work... If I work this way, I can’t do anything wrong.”

Want to take these ideas further?

Go beyond the page and see lean leadership in action. The Lean Leadership Learning Tour (Nov. 10–13, 2025) takes you inside Toyota, GE Appliances, and Summit Polymers to witness real-world problem-solving, leadership development, and transformation at scale. Bring a colleague, align your vision, and return ready to accelerate change.

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By Lean Enterprise Institute

4.7

2020 ratings