It is no secret that Toyota relies on extensive prototyping during its product development stage. Initially I found it hard to understand toyota’s way as I always wondered.. How can Toyota spend a considerable time and effort on prototyping, but still manage to successfully develop and release new models of cars in record breaking speeds?. That’s when I was introduced to Toyota’s emphasis on tradeoff curves.
So what are these tradeoff curves and why are they referred to as the cornerstone of knowledge?
The best definition that I have found for the above is that they provide the subsystem knowledge to create the system design and more importantly provide the ongoing knowledge for future projects. The data for the tradeoff curve is obtained by comparatively mapping various subsystem design data to both system performance and other important subsystem characteristics. To achieve greater efficiency, Toyota relies on capturing real test data and thus is their reliance on developing so many prototypes. The main advantage is that, this database of real test data provides ongoing knowledge for future projects and also provides for any redundancy. Thus their emphasis on research and development using prototyping provides for optimum utilization of time and resources.
Some of the advantages are as follows:
- Allows a risk adverse system balanced with the continual infusion of new ideas
- Provides for changing system design requirements
- All knowledge gained is not lost, but is banked for future projects
- Allows for more innovation with less risk – thus provides for a higher project success rate
- Providing for redundancy plays an important role to have a risk adverse system balanced with the continual infusion of new ideas
I shall discuss the concept of ‘Learning to effort ratio’ in my next blog. That should provide a better perspective to the advantages of using the tradeoff curves.
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