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The purpose of the paper is to present a fundamental mindset that an experienced Japanese Toyota Production System (TPS) consultant has when he drives a series of improvement activities during a lean transformation.

The main author of this paper conducted participant observations on two lean transformation cases at two medium‐sized Swedish manufacturing companies. The studied lean transformations are driven by the mentioned Japanese consultant. Before he became a consultant, he had practiced TPS more than 20 years at a supplier company of Toyota.

Instead of making a detailed plan to implement lean production, the consultant focuses on creating the need for improvement. The identified fundamental mindset that drives a lean transformation can be described as “occasionally by force, create a situation where people have no choice (or little choice) but to feel the need of improvement. The situation is such that it brings different problems up to surface. Through letting people solve the problems one‐by‐one, the performance of the operation as well as the capability of individual and organizational learning are improved.” Various lean techniques are simply used based on the surfaced problems.

The recent research shows that a contingent nature is required in lean transformation, especially when it requires an organizational cultural change. However, a limited number of researches have shown practical ways of conducting a lean transformation with a contingent approach. The paper identifies a simple but practical way of doing it.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a ferromagnetic needle adaptable for a novel ablation cancer therapy; the heat generation ability of the mild steel rod embedded into the Ti‐tube having a different thickness was investigated in a high‐frequency output at 300 kHz.

The outer diameter and length of the Ti‐tubes were 1.8 and 20 mm, respectively, while the inner diameter was varied from 1.6 to 0 mm. The mild steel rod was embedded in a Ti‐tube for preparing the needle‐type specimen. Their heat generation ability was examined by changing the inclination angle to the magnetic flux direction in a high‐frequency coil.

When the thickness of the Ti surrounding the mild steel rod was as low as 0.1 mm, the heat generation ability was drastically different among the three inclination angles (θ=0°, 45°, and 90°) to the magnetic flux direction due to the effect of the shape‐induced magnetic anisotropy. However, the effect of the inclination angle was almost eliminated in the specimen surrounded by the 0.4 mm thick Ti, suggesting that the non‐oriented heat generation property is achieved for the needle‐type mild steel rod coated with Ti having the optimum thickness.

The prototype ablation needle having a complete non‐oriented heat generation ability was fabricated to use in subsequent animal experiments. It is considered that the newly designed Ti‐coated device is useful in ablation treatments using a high‐frequency induction heating.