"The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles From the World's Greatest Manufacturer"

Jeffrey Liker

New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004

This book can be considered the best single volume on the principles that have made Toyota such an outstanding manufacturer. The author of this book has 20 years of experience of visits and interviews at Toyota facilities in Japan and the United States. To write this book, he recently interviewed 40 managers and executives from Toyota. The distillation of his understanding of how Toyota works is presented in the 14 Management Principles discussed in this book:

1. Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals. Generate value for the customer, society, and the economy. Have a sense of purpose that supersedes short-term decision-making. Strive to decide your own fate.
2. Create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface. Move material and information quickly, and make the flow clear so that continuous improvement can occur.
3. Use "pull" systems to avoid overproduction. Material replenishment stimulated by consumption is the basic principle.
4. Level out the workload. This includes eliminating overburden to people and equipment, as well as eliminating unevenness in the production schedule.
5. Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time. As a base for this culture, build in support systems to quickly solve problems.
6. Standardized tasks are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment. Allow creativity to improve the standard, but follow the current standard to maintain reliability.
7. Use visual controls so no problems are hidden. Keep these methods simple so people can easily see the current situation at any time.
8. Use only reliable, thoroughly tested equipment that serves your people and processes. Often it is best to work out a reliable process manually before attempting to apply new technology.
9. Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others. Leaders should be grown from within, and they should be role models of the company's philosophy and way of doing business.
10. Develop exceptional people and teams who follow your company's philosophy. Work very hard to reinforce the company culture, and to influence people to work in teams towards the company's goals.
11. Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them improve. Partners and suppliers should be treated as if they were an extension of your business.
12. Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation. Don't rely only on what you hear from other people or what you see on the computer screen. Even top executives should practice this principle.
13. Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options; implement decisions rapidly. The consensus process broadens the search for solutions, and guarantees a more rapid implementation.
14. Become a learning organization through relentless reflection and continuous improvement. Always have the approach that there is something new to learn at all times.

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