Read a piece of news about how Toyota is trying to control the health care cost in its US plant. For the past 5 years, Toyota health care cost doubled to 11,000USD per person in its US plants. Toyota is experimenting setting up a plant clinic for its employees and supplier employees in one of its NA plant. The clinic is focusing on providing proactive measures to avoid big expense of hospitalization when health condition gets worse.
The news comments this is the traditional Toyota way to do business – Kaizen philosophy.
Read a book last night about Chrysler development of its Minivan (not finished yet). The author claims that Americans like revolution instead of evolution. They are running into a point of failure and make revolutionary measures to change their system. While the Japanese like evolution – Kaizen. They relentlessly improve on their system. Never give it up. Toyota is a good example. It is keep on stressing reducing cost and avoid big company disease. (The specific definition of this disease might be bureaucracy when a company is getting big)
Evolution vs. Revolution. Which philosophy is more applicable for a business operation? Revolution is a result of evolution. When evolution accumulates to a point which the old system/frame could not support the new contents, the system will have a fundamental change. The problem is in nature revolution rarely existing. Every thing needs time to happen. The long time lasting actually is evolution. The final system is totally different from the beginning. So, separate evolution and revolution is only decided by time. If the time is lasting longer for a new system to take form, it is called evolution. If it happens very fast, it's called revolution. Revolution only exists in human society. In nature, it does not exist. Revolution always brings waste, pain and disaster, chaos. I admire Toyota system.
Evolution needs careful planning and foresight.
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