Book review

The Toyota way

Dr Jeffery Liker, author of this book, has thoroughly studied the Toyota’s Culture and his

way of working within the industry. In 1982, the top OEMs we losing money, and Ford was

very close to bankruptcy. But, during the same time Toyota was making huge profits. Dr

Liker, suggested that the huge difference between the American firms and the Japanese firms

was one of the key reasons for the performance of these firms. American firms blamed the

Japanese invasion, but ignored their production inefficiency.

Toyota’s ingrained the culture so deep that it made it their power, and dominated the world of

OEMs. Toyota, used operational excellence as a strategic weapon. Toyota invented the

Toyota production system, TPS, also know widely known as Lean production system. Since

Toyota was using TPS, other firms also tried to adopt the same system. Toyota themselves set

up centres to teach and spread TPS. But Dr liker pointed out, even after learning TPS, these

firms aren’t lean. The reason behind that is, TPS is all about continuous learning and

continuous improvement. Firms thought once they learn Lean production and implement it,

that would be enough. But they ignored the fact about continuous learning. And hence, these

firms aren’t lean.

Dr Liker, came up with the 4P model on studying the Toyota culture. The 4Ps are Problem

solving, People and Partners, Process and Philosophy.

Toyota became the world’s best manufacturer. Toyota is hugely influenced by the culture its

founders moulded within the firm. Toyoda family, created a generation of strong leadership.

When world war II was over, Japan was in an economic crisis. So, Kiichiro Toyoda, sent a

team to Ford’s US plant to study mass production. Taiichi Ohno, studied the systems and

observed the flaws in the existing systems. Taiichi Ohno, came up with the TPS. He invented
TPS, based it on the one-piece flow principle. The heart of TPS- is eliminating the waste.

Taiichi Ohno came up with 7 types of waste. The author of the book added and extra waste to

it, which was unused employee creativity. There are exactly 14 principles in TPS, which

carries on the true essence of TPS. TPS, is based on the two core pillars, JIT and Jidoka. JIT

is just in time process and Jidoka is built-in-quality.

Lexus- Luxury Car

Manufacturing Lexus was a statement that Toyota isn’t just a small car manufacturer. They

had this “No Compromise” development of Lexus. Listening to customers and benchmarking

the competition is how Toyota started their development process. Toyota gave it all in to

achieve the No Compromise objectives.

Prius- Hybrid vehicle

Adhering to the long-term Philosophy, Toyota management came up with a project to 21

century cars, called G-21. Two objectives were set for G21,

 Develop new method for manufacturing 21st century cars

 Develop cars for 21st century cars

Toyota came up with a new development process, creating Obeya and Simultaneous

engineering. Obeya’s mean war room and simultaneous engineering is nurturing innovation.

In obeya, Toyota came up with two keywords to work on, Environment friendly, conserving

natural resources. Then they started work on the G21, which is today know as Prius.

This is how Toyota, known as a traditional firm, transformed itself into a innovative firm.

The long term philosophy of Toyota makes them, one of the best OEMs.