Toyotism on Freight Forwarders.

 Working on a freight forwarder for more than a year now, with constant and fast changes, made me reflect about how we could make a step forward and create a strategic advantage to other freight forwarders.  

I started to look for that 43 people team and saw how every single person has a peculiarity, his own single process to organize his day, resolve his professional issues, his own priorities and way to manage his time. That is also 43 different points of view that might lead to a better understanding of the market and it constant evolving process.

There was just a single step to give for each individual value and voice and let each of them show what the positive and negative aspect of their department is. With a regular small survey I started a changing process.

Our goal in this project is to identify our best and our worst on each department and each individual aspect, show the best and worst points to each team leader and organize a team to naturally evolve the company processes, on a simple and fast way. Also identify leadership potential.

Changing small things everyday day, every week we might show a great change in the future.

Once I was watching a documentary about how motorcycles like MV Augusta could have more than 100hp on a 1000cc motor, it’s a 1.0 car motor, with almost double of it power. What got me to this documentary was what one of the directors explained about their capability to evolve their motors: “we do not seek for a breakthrough from a 70 hp motor to a 150 hp motor, we make small changes and each small change we make guarantees us a 5-10 horsepower. This year we’re planning to increase our motor power in 15 hp.”

Sometimes we see a small company growing fast. And as faster as it grows more you will see it leaders not caring about how this company is growing and just looking for the extra demand. So they start hiring and hiring, there is no evolving on the employee, his process, the service, his function, salary or any other aspect. It’s just more people making same strength.

Actually there is an IT joke that says that the project manager is the person that thinks that 9 pregnant women can have a baby in a month.  

Back to the project: I’m trying to create the change culture that this company that I’m working now needs to create a strategic advantage, create leaders and opportunities for the good employees, manage low motivated partners and evolve it’s processes on a fast way that we can spread the changes in a few months and start implementing this kind of solution in other companies.