Benoy Joseph

Obeya is often referred to as “Large room” in a project. The origin of this term was from Toyota in 1990s during their project G21, which led to the first generation of  Toyota Prius. Takeshi Uchiyamada was appointed the Chief Engineer for the project, and he always felt that he lacked the required authority to make the right decisions and feared being overrun by more experienced department leaders, which may adversely impact the project.
In order to ensure he had alignment from all stakeholders he constituted the “large room” – Obeya in Japanese – as an arena for discussions with the department leaders. This forum will have all the relevant stakeholder with relevant data and information to make decision making seamless. The concept of Obeya room was largely successful in Toyota, and hence they integrated it as part of Toyota Product Development System.
 
Why is Obeya required for large cross functional projects –
 
The biggest challenge in cross functional project is, the individual functions not seeing the big-picture of the how a new product or service will bring to the organization. They operate in silos, which in-turn results in lack of synergy between functions or department and result in project delays or failure.
According to Shigeo Shingo: "People don't care what until they understand why." The organization vision and operational objectives well-articulated, gives meaning to the employees, which result in improved commitment and accountability for employees to act.
 
Various tools like Hoshin Kanri are used to create alignment between activities, and to establish organizations vision, Individual and team goals. Obeya, helps to visualize Hoshin Kanri, and helps create a collaborative environment for cross functional problem sharing and decision making.

 
In Obeya rooms (as explained in the above diagram), cross functional project teams can be focused on the project or organizations vision. Measure the success using KPIs, identify gaps in meeting KPIs quickly and follow a PDCA cycle (plan, do, check, act)  to resolve issues, resulting in timely completion of projects with minimum resistance.