People in every industry have been learning from Toyota and going Lean. Can Musk do better?

Tesla just announced that it is shutting down production of the Model 3 for six days. According to Autoblog:

In a long memo published in Electrek, Musk explains that he has had trouble feeding the machine, blaming the complexity of the supply chain.

He blames the suppliers for not meeting his standards.

I read all this shortly after having had the honor of speaking at the Lean Construction Conference in Vancouver, on the theme “reducing waste and working smarter.” Lean is based on the Toyota Production system which aimed for Kaizen (continuous improvement), respect for people, and Jidoka, (build a culture of stopping to fix problems to get quality right from the start).

© Lean Construction Institute Canada

Before I went to the conference, and while I was there, I tried to learn about Lean and the principles behind it, going right back to the Toyota Production System. Even their way of organizing supplies, Kanban, can be used to organize your life. When you then read about Musk cranking the production line at all costs, and beating up on suppliers instead of trying to fix the problems, you have to wonder. Lean expert Jeffrey Liker wrote in the Lean Post:

The Battle of Giants via Seeking Alpha/Screen capture

Over on Seeking Alpha, a Tesla stock analysis site, they do a side-by-side Tesla vs Toyota analysis and it is not pretty. They conclude that " Tesla will continue to face production challenges and high costs for the rest of 2018".

Entire industries are now learning Toyota with lean management, design, and manufacturing, whereas Musk is determined to reinvent manufacturing, with the factory as the product. A lot of people out there think this is a mistake.

© Tesla Model 3/ Tesla

On the other hand, Tesla makes a product that a lot of people want. He has astonished the world with his rockets and his cars and may well succeed where others have failed at reinventing the factory. I really do hope that he does succeed and that we see his Model 3s everywhere soon.