2009年03月的文章

First Lesson of Management-Putting Customers First

Shotaro Kamiya was to Toyota Motor Sales what Ohno was to the Toyota Production System. His leadership defined the sales philosophy of Toyota. Like most Toyota leaders, Kamiya could be described as a self-made man....

First American President of Toyota Motor Manufacturing

Given that the Toyota Way is to make decisions slowly, thoroughly considering alternatives (see Make Decisions Slowly by Consensus,Thoroughly Considering All Options; Implement Rapidly (Nemawashi) on nemawashi), it was not surprising that Toyota took a...

The Role of Technology - Adapting It Appropriately

In industry today, the watchword is flexibility. Everyone wants to be as flexible as possible and Toyota is no exception. Originally, what allowed Toyota to compete with global players was its flexibility. To Toyota, flexibility...

IT in Toyota’s Product Development Process

In the early 1980s, the trend among automakers was to develop their own internal computer-aided design (CAD) system for designing parts on a computer rather than on paper blueprints. Toyota did this like everyone else,...

How Information Technology Supports the Toyota Way

I accompanied the University of Michigan’s Dean of Engineering on a trip to Japan some years ago and one of our hosts was Mikio Kitano, who at that time was overseeing the Motomachi complex—Toyota’s largest...

People Do the Work, Computers Move the Information

When I teach about Toyota’s system, I start with the basics including kanban, which is mainly a manual visual process. If there is an information technology specialist in the house, he or she inevitably asks...

Keeping It Visual Through Technology and Human Systems

In today’s world of computers, information technology, and automation, one of the goals is to make the office and factory paperless. You can now use computers, the Internet, and the corporate intranet to call up...

Visual Control and Office Work

I have spent a lot of time at the Toyota Technical Center in Michigan, where they engineer vehicles like Camry and Avalon. For much of this time, Kunihiko (“Mike”) Masaki was the president there. Masaki...

The Principle-Clean It Up, Make It Visual

When Americans were making pilgrimages to Japanese plants in the 1970s and ’80s, the first reaction was invariably “The factories were so clean you could eat off of the floor.” For the Japanese this was...

Use Visual Control So No Problems Are Hidden

Mr. Ohno was passionate about TPS. He said you must clean up everything so you can see problems. He would complain if he could not look and see and tell if there is a problem....

Standardization as an Enabler

The critical task when implementing standardization is to find that balance between providing employees with rigid procedures to follow and providing the freedom to innovate and be creative to meet challenging targets consistently for cost,...

Standardizing Work for a New Product Launch

The Toyota Way of handling the chaos of getting an army of people involved in creating and launching a new vehicle is to standardize the work in a balanced way that doesn’t give complete control...

Coercive vs. Enabling Bureaucracies-Employee Empowerment

Under Taylor’s (1947) scientific management, workers were viewed as machines who needed to be made as efficient as possible through the manipulations of industrial engineers and autocratic managers. The process consisted of the following: Scientifically...