Insider Secrets Behind the Toyota Production System & Boyd's OODA Loop with Charlie Protzman | Ep 22

Charlie Protzman is an international business consultant, multiple Shingo Prize-winning author, speaker, trainer, leadership coach and Implementer in Lean Business Delivery systems. Charlie has over 36 years of experience in Materials and Operations Management and has saved his clients millions of dollars. 

Specialties include training and implementing Lean Thinking / CI for manufacturing, healthcare, government, and service industries. Charlie is particularly experienced working with all types of process variation in assembly processes and is an expert at baton zone (bumping) line balancing.

Charlie has participated in train the trainer for Scrum The Toyota Way, Agile, The Flow System, and advanced training for the Cynefin Framework.

Be sure to use the Chapters Feature on Apple and Spotify to quickly browse and navigate to segments of this episode.

Lean Leadership Basics
Charlie Protzman on LinkedIn
Business Improvement Group (BIG) Lean Consulting

NWO Intro with Boyd

March 25, 2025

Flow Learning Lab

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Substack: The Whirl of ReOrientation

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Chapters

• 2:38 The Shingo Prize
• 6:48 1946: Japan, Gen. MacArthur, Sarasohn, Protzman
• 12:49 1950s: Japan, Deming, Drucker
• 13:33 Civil Communication Section (CCS)
• 14:56 A Leadership Purge Leads to American-Style Management
• 20:22 The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) Cycle
• 24:35 Costs Up, Selling Price Up
• 30:08 Deming Didn’t Teach CCS Students Anything New
• 30:57 Who is Charles W. Protzman (Charlie’s Grandfather)
• 32:48 Overcoming Japan’s Power Distance Index
• 34:40 Newport News Shipbuilding Company (A Note on Quality)
• 37:07 From Training with Industry (TWI) to JKK at Toyota
• 40:40 Transitioning Veterans and the Toyota Production System (TPS)
• 43:13 Unlearning: The Shift from MBA Management to TPS Leadership
• 44:55 The Machine that Changed the World
• 47:17 A Shingo Prize Winner Visits Boyd’s Archives
• 50:47 John Boyd: I Cannot Believe They Are Calling this “Lean”
• 51:39 A Message to Lean Enthusiasts Who Dismiss Boyd
• 58:08 Implicit Guidance and Control (IG&C), Brain Efficiency, Entropy
• 1:03:07 Control is Outside-In Bottom-Up: Thoughts on Hoshin Planning
• 1:06:33 Workers Set Standards, Management Monitors
• 1:08:14 Healthy Paranoia
• 1:13:18 Kaizen (Continuous Incremental Change) is Bottom-Up First
• 1:18:00 Shingo: Don’t Blame the Worker
• 1:22:27 Don’t Blame Frederick W. Taylor
• 1:28:23 The Toyota Way? Toyota Production System? Kanban? Jidoka? People?
• 1:38:41 Charlie on Boyd’s Orientation
• 1:39:22 PDCA, OODA, and the Cynefin Framework
• 1:42:43 Charlie’s Client Learns to Create Mismatches
• 1:55:43 How to Connect with Charlie Protzman
• 1:57:48 Wrapping-up this Podcast Episode