The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer

  • 7h 1m
  • Jeffrey K. Liker
  • McGraw-Hill
  • 2004

What Can Your Business Learn From Toyota?

  • Double or triple the speed of any business process
  • Build quality into workplace systems
  • Eliminate the huge costs of hidden waste
  • Turn every employee into a quality control inspector

With a market capitalization greater than the value of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler combined, Toyota is also, (by far), the world’s most profitable automaker. Toyota’s well-known “secret weapon” is Lean production—the revolutionary approach to business processes that it invented in the 1950s and has spend decades perfecting. Less well known are the management principles that underlie Lean production, Lean product development, and all of Toyota’s business and service processes. Today businesses around the world are attempting to implement Toyota’s radical system for speeding up processes, reducing waste, and improving quality. But are they getting beneath the surface of Lean tools and techniques to the real foundation of Toyota’s success?

The Toyota Way, explains Toyota’s unique approach to Lean management—the 14 principles that drive Toyota’s quality and efficiency-obsessed culture. You’ll gain valuable insights that can be applied to any organization and any business process, whether in services or manufacturing. You’ll discover how the right combination of long-term philosophy, processes, people, and problem solving can transform your organization into a Lean, learning enterprise—the Toyota Way.

About the Author

Jeffrey K. Liker, Ph.D., is Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan, and cofounder and Director of the Japan Technology Management Program and the Lean Manufacturing and Product Development Certificate Program at the university. Winner of four Shingo Prizes for Excellence, Dr. Liker’s writings on Toyota have appeared in The Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and other leading publications. Dr. Liker is a principal of Optiprise, a Lean enterprise/supply chain management consulting firm, and was the editor of Becoming Lean: Experiences of U.S. Manufacturers, which won the 1998 Shigeo Shingo prize for excellence in manufacturing research.

In this Book

  • The Toyota Way—14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer
  • The Toyota Way: Using Operational Excellence as a Strategic Weapon
  • How Toyota Became the World’s Best Manufacturer: The Story of the Toyoda Family and the Toyota Production System
  • The Heart of the Toyota Production System: Eliminating Waste
  • The 14 Principles of the Toyota Way: An Executive Summary of the Culture Behind TPS
  • The Toyota Way in Action: The “No Compromises” Development of Lexus
  • The Toyota Way in Action: New Century, New Fuel, New Design Process—Prius
  • Long-Term Philosophy
  • Principle 1: Base Your Management Decisions on a Long-Term Philosophy, Even at the Expense of Short-Term Financial Goals
  • The Right Process Will Produce the Right Results
  • Principle 2: Create Continuous Process Flow to Bring Problems to the Surface
  • Principle 3: Use “Pull” Systems to Avoid Overproduction
  • Principle 4: Level Out the Workload (Heijunka)
  • Principle 5: Build a Culture of Stopping to Fix Problems, to Get Quality Right the First Time
  • Principle 6: Standardized Tasks Are the Foundation for Continuous Improvement and Employee Empowerment
  • Principle 7: Use Visual Control So No Problems Are Hidden
  • Principle 8: Use Only Reliable, Thoroughly Tested Technology That Serves Your People and Processes
  • Add Value to the Organization by Developing Your People and Partners
  • Principle 9: Grow Leaders Who Thoroughly Understand the Work, Live the Philosophy, and Teach It to Others
  • Principle 10: Develop Exceptional People and Teams Who Follow Your Company’s Philosophy
  • Principle 11: Respect Your Extended Network of Partners and Suppliers by Challenging Them and Helping Them Improve
  • Continuously Solving Root Problems Drives Organizational Learning
  • Principle 12: Go and See for Yourself to Thoroughly Understand the Situation (Genchi Genbutsu)
  • Principle 13: Make Decisions Slowly by Consensus,Thoroughly Considering All Options; Implement Rapidly (Nemawashi)
  • Principle 14: Become a Learning Organization Through Relentless Reflection (Hansei) and Continuous Improvement (Kaizen)
  • Using the Toyota Way to Transform Technical and Service Organizations
  • Build Your Own Lean Learning Enterprise, Borrowing from the Toyota Way
  • Bibliography/Chapter References
  • Recommended for Further Reading
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