In today’s post, I am looking at the Ohno Circle in light of Heidegger’s ideas. I will try to stay away from the neologisms used by Heidegger and will only scratch the surface of his deep insights. One of the best explanations of Ohno Circle comes from one of his students, Teruyuki Minoura, the past President and CEO of Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America, Inc. He had a first-hand experience of it. Minoura noted:

Mr. Ohno often would draw a circle on the floor in the middle of a bottleneck area, and he would make us stand in that circle all day long and watch the process. He wanted us to watch and ask “why?” over and over.

You may have heard about the five “why’s” in TPS. Mr. Ohno felt that if we stood in that circle, watching and asking “why?”, better ideas would come to us. He realized…