Toyota Lean Development Programme – first round success

Category: News
Mar 24, 2025

Last week, we completed our first round of Toyota Lean Development Programmes through the Toyota Lean Management Centre (TLMC). Twelve of our staff undertook group projects to help improve our business, targeting areas of concern such as uncontrolled reclaim material, 6S auditing, and effective shift handovers.

The partnership was forged from a previous collaboration with the TLMC specialists that one of our team members had experienced at a previous workplace, which resulted in a business transformation. We have very good systems here at Plessey; however, there was an opportunity for us to develop our staff by adopting the broad principles of the Toyota Way—Continuous Improvement and Respect for others. The “Plessey Way” should be a long-term vision encouraging our staff to adopt a step-by-step approach to challenges and problem-solving and engage in ongoing innovation.

Twelve staff members were chosen from across our production and engineering teams. They worked closely with Paul Blahyj from TLMC. The groups visited the Toyota site in Derby to see the Toyota Way in practice, and Paul visited our site several times to coach the teams on their projects.

Paul from TLMC, who has worked closely with the teams, said the following of the experience:

“I have had the utter pleasure of working with the wonderful people at Plessey over the last 7 months.
Together, we went on a journey that was engaging from minute one.
This wasn’t a journey designed to improve KPIs or business efficiency, it was a journey designed to develop the most important part of any business, the people.
The openness, the friendliness, and the willingness to learn from all 12 people was amazing. I enjoyed meeting every single one of them. I enjoyed watching them grow. I enjoyed being with them. But most of all, I was so proud of every one of them when they fed back their activity to the PLT.
Thanks Team Plessey. I look forward to the next 6 months starting in May.”

We look forward to our next round of projects and continuing to develop the “Plessey Way” over the next few months.