One of Taiichi Ohno’s first assignments at Toyota was to prepare job descriptions, and he found the experience invaluable. Only through preparing their own job descriptions, he concluded, could workers comprehend the details of their work and know why they should have to do things that way, and only then would they be capable of pondering other, better ways to do it — the basis for kaizen. Ever since, shop-floor teams at Toyota have prepared their own work instructions and standard work descriptions for their work areas.