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zoagli's Reviews > The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer
The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer
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It‘s unfair to rate such a seminal book 20 years after its first publication by today’s standards, but I can only recommend this book to absolute novices. To me, this seems like such basic knowledge. If you want something more practical, try the same author’s “The Toyota Way to Service Excellence.” But before you read that, there are a few things you need to know about Lean a.k.a. "The Toyota Way":
"The Toyota Way" is a culture, a path and a commitment, not a set of tools to apply to a problem. The key concept is Kaizen: a commitment to strive for improvement continuously. This requires continuous learning in an environment that embraces change and strives to get quality right the first time. The goal is one-piece flow by linking processes so tightly that problems cannot hide in inventory or in queues.
Create flow by following these steps:
- Determine who the customer is and what the customer needs.
- Separate processes the continually recur from one-time processes that are unique.
- For repetitive processes, creatively apply the Toyota Way principles: Observe the source: Go see for yourself and ask “why” over and over until you understand it. Chart the flow to determine which activities are value-added and which are not. Use visual controls to see the work-in-process, so that no activities are hidden. Use ‘pull’ systems to avoid overproduction. Level the workload: Output should not vary from day to day, because production swings according to varying demand are too inefficient. Eliminate waste, including overproduction, delay, unneeded transport, overprocessing, excess inventory, unproductive movement, defects and unused employee creativity.
- Once you have a working model, expand it to your less repetitive processes.
The Toyota Way proves many counter-intuitive conclusions:
- Apply a long-term philosophy even if your short-term goals suffer as a result. Your company’s primary mission is to generate value for your customers and for society at large.
- Develop people and teams: To have excellent teams, you need excellent team members. Making everyone work faster leads to overproduction and will actually increase costs.
- Use only well-proven technology, and adopt new technology only if it supports your people, your processes or your values.
- Know when it is better to use people: Using manual processes is often a better idea than using IT, even when automation is available. While automation might reduce your headcount, people are a very flexible resource.
"The Toyota Way" is a culture, a path and a commitment, not a set of tools to apply to a problem. The key concept is Kaizen: a commitment to strive for improvement continuously. This requires continuous learning in an environment that embraces change and strives to get quality right the first time. The goal is one-piece flow by linking processes so tightly that problems cannot hide in inventory or in queues.
Create flow by following these steps:
- Determine who the customer is and what the customer needs.
- Separate processes the continually recur from one-time processes that are unique.
- For repetitive processes, creatively apply the Toyota Way principles: Observe the source: Go see for yourself and ask “why” over and over until you understand it. Chart the flow to determine which activities are value-added and which are not. Use visual controls to see the work-in-process, so that no activities are hidden. Use ‘pull’ systems to avoid overproduction. Level the workload: Output should not vary from day to day, because production swings according to varying demand are too inefficient. Eliminate waste, including overproduction, delay, unneeded transport, overprocessing, excess inventory, unproductive movement, defects and unused employee creativity.
- Once you have a working model, expand it to your less repetitive processes.
The Toyota Way proves many counter-intuitive conclusions:
- Apply a long-term philosophy even if your short-term goals suffer as a result. Your company’s primary mission is to generate value for your customers and for society at large.
- Develop people and teams: To have excellent teams, you need excellent team members. Making everyone work faster leads to overproduction and will actually increase costs.
- Use only well-proven technology, and adopt new technology only if it supports your people, your processes or your values.
- Know when it is better to use people: Using manual processes is often a better idea than using IT, even when automation is available. While automation might reduce your headcount, people are a very flexible resource.
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