Although Toyota Kata is usually thought of as ‘scientific thinking’, I think of it as the artistic, creative process! Why is that? Because my definition of creativity is ‘combining previous knowledge and/or experiences in new ways to generate ideas about how to do things differently’. When we practice the improvement and coaching katas, we learn through doing small experiments towards a target condition. By combining what we learn through each iteration and experiment, we ‘create’ the solutions, services and products that our customers need! Great time discussing these concepts with Kata in Service participants and TWI summit attendees today! So what do you think – is Toyota Kata the scientific approach…artistic process…both?
Both! Well said!