"Toyota's Real Secret"

John Teresko

Industry Week

February 2007, pp. 36-42

The labor productivity gap between the most-effective and least-effective North American auto manufacturers is continuing to narrow. While Toyota still holds the edge in applying lean practices, this article argues that a larger proportion of that edge is increasingly coming from lean product development practices. Increasing product variations highlight the need for product design/production collaboration increases. Toyota has moved the lessons of the Toyota Production System upstream to product development.

The article includes a list of the 13 principles of lean product development as identified by James Morgan and Jeffrey Liker in their recent book titled "The Toyota Product Development System":

1. Establish customer-defined value to separate value-added from waste
2. Front-load the product development process to explore thoroughly alternative solutions while there is maximum design space
3. Create a level product development process flow
4. Utilize rigorous standardization to reduce variation, and create flexibility and predictable outcomes
5. Develop a chief engineer system to integrate development form start to finish
6. Organize to balance functional expertise and cross-functional integration
7. Develop towering competence in all engineers
8. Fully integrate suppliers into the product development system
9. Build in learning and continuous improvement
10. Build a culture to support excellence and relentless improvement
11. Adopt technologies to fit your people and process
12. Align your organization through simple visual communication
13. Use powerful tools for standardization and organizational learning

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