The cover of the book carries a very simple statement, “Toyota is as much a state of mind as it is a car company”. In the foreword to the book Gary Canvis, a President in Toyota Kentucky has written, that the two pillars that support the Toyota Production System are “ Continuous Improvement” and “Respect for People”. Toyota Production System is an utopia that is every manufacturer’s dream, but it is not easy to emulate and implement. If one can understand and adapt even a part of it, the savings will be enormous.This book coins fourteen management principles from the world’s greatest manufacturer.
1. Base your management decisions on a long term philosophy even at the expense of short term fiscal goals.
2. Create Continuous Process Flow of Bringing Problems to Surface.
3. Use Pull System to avoid over production.
4. Leave out the Workload
5. Build a culture of Stopping to Fix Problems to Get Quality Right the First Time.
6. Standardize Tasks Are the First Foundation of Continuous Improvement.
7. Use Visual Controls, so that No Problems are Hidden.
8. Use on Reliable and Thoroughly Tested Technology.
9. Grow leaders, who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy and teach it to others,
10. Develop exceptional people and team who follow your company’s philosophy
11. Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them to improve.
12. Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation
13. Make decisions slowly by consensus and evaluating all options, but once decided implement it very fast.
14. Become a Learning Organization through Relentless Reflection and Continuous Small Improvements
The last two chapters of the book are most interesting. One discusses the use of Toyota Way to transform technical and service organizations. And the other is on how to build your own learning enterprise, borrowing from the Toyota way.
Toyota follows three categories of activities and monitor them :
Value Added : What is the actual transformation process core to the product or service that the customer is paying for.
Non-Value Added: What is a pure waste ? wait times, walk times, rework time and unused information.
Non-Value Added but required : inspection, control, documentation etc.
The purpose is always to minimize the second category .
The toughest and the basic challenge for companies that want to learn from Toyota is how to create an aligned organization of individuals who each have the DNA of the organization and continuously learning together to add value to the customer.
About changing culture the suggestions are :
1. Start from the top – this may require executive leadership shakeup
2. Involve from the bottom up.
3. Use middle managers as change agents
4. It takes time to develop people who really understand and live the philosophy.
5. On a scale of difficulty, it is extremely difficult.
The ultimate object of Toyota Way is to become a lean and learning organization. That simple. !
The rest is in the book for studying yourself.
