Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book outlines many fine principles that Toyota Motor Corporation used to build this company. However, if Dr. Liker had devoted an extensive period of time in the Georgetown, KY facility, TMMK, where I've been a Team Member for 13 years, he would have gained a better perspective as to how the modern Toyota system operates, quite unlike the blueprint outlined by this company's founders. Quality is not the same as it was 10 years ago and cost cutting is the flavor of the day. Our workforce consists of a large percentage of temporary non-Toyota employees, many who have been here online for over 4 years. We have not earned a J.D. Power award in a few years either. Mr. Convis, who authored the forward, is the President of TMMK and has recently been engaged in thwarting a union movement by nearly 40% of the regular Team Members. In short, Dr. Liker's failure to extensively study Toyota in action in todays environment failed to appreciate the notion that the 14 principles are ideal, but only if practiced. I welcome anyone at Toyota to prove me wrong. I will say this: When Mr. Cho opened this plant back in 1988, we were a much better run organization and we earned many J.D. Power awards because the environment at that time was the application of many of these 14 Principles - not so today. I believe the author should rethink the way he writes his next book - this one isn't accurate and the reader is being misled if he or she thinks that Toyota adheres to this philosophy

"Toyota is as much a state of mind as it is a car company" So reads the quote from USA Today on the front cover of this book. And this quote is more true than is evident at first sight. The "state of mind" is the Toyota myth.

Myth is the ability to organize and structure our world according to various patterns and ideals. Often these patterns are hypothetical and the historical allusions used to buttress them fabricated or exaggerated. Such is the case of Toyota.

The book reads like a religious text. Liker is selling not a car company but a brand and a brand image. He has "converted" to the Toyota Way and is now seeking to win converts to the cause. Fortunately, the cause as he paints it, is a worthy one, even if only Platonically so.

The emphasis on values and people is heart warming. There is also a propensity to focus on successes and to gloss over the less successful. Everything at Toyota begins with the entrepreneurial grandfather Toyota trying to create a better loom to lesson his mother's workload. How idyllic and surreal. The story begins with romantic mythmaking.

The uniqueness of Toyota can be understood by understanding its unique geo-political and historical origins. Liker likes to compare Toyota with slow and arrogant American manufactures, and to be sure there is much truth to be seen here. But what is missing is the recognition that early Toyota was not a major economic and social institution, globally or locally when it began to fashion itself in what is now called the Toyota Way.

The American automobile enterprise grew up in the height of the industrial revolution. In many respects it led the revolution. Toyota got on the bandwagon much later and as a follower. It had the privilege or touring Ford and GM and then picking and choosing the best components and building a company from scratch without having to reorganize and rebuild a whole new beast. This was not inventiveness, but reinventiveness, but with a twist. The hindsight of being able to see some of the costs of the industrial revolution before they became institutionalized to their project is their one and only innovation.

What Liker fails to address is how the American industries were struggling with reorganizing and adjusting to changing socio-economic times. Toyota did not need to do this because it was fashioned in these new times and was tailor made to them.

The failure to report on Toyota struggles is also a significant feature of this book. The struggles illustrated are all deliberately manufactured: deadlines moved up, complete engine plant redesigns, line shut downs, etc. What about the legitimate failures that Toyota has faced and how they have worked through them to become better. What about those areas that have not yet been fixed and continue to be a problem areas.

The book reads like that written by someone sold on the idea and unwilling to admit any fault. A company the size of Toyota is not that perfect. Liker stresses perfection in the extreme. Toyota can do no wrong. It does the "right thing" in communities, with unions, sharing its ideas with its competitors and other markets, and in how it deals with its employees. Toyota is a cult. For this it gains long term employees who never leave, can't leave, and who have sold out to the company. Their honour and identity belongs to Toyota.

What the book does teach, and teach well, is that culture and philosophy are integral to business modelling. Toyota as imagined in this book is unique. The shift in culture between this institution and most others is dramatic. Most will be unable to make this shift, and not all will need to.

Liker wants his reader to think that you can't pick and choose from the Toyota way. If you really want to have the success of Toyota you have to become Toyota. So culturally ingrained is the idea that if you are not Japanese you probably could not do it as well. Toyota is not merely good culture, it is the perfection of Japanese culture exported around the world.

In as much as there is much good to learn from Toyota, this is not a bad thing. Adopting the best of any culture is not selling out, but learning and adapting in the most responsible kind of way. But to assume that this culture, which piggybacks on other cultures for its innovation and technological and economic enterprise is the best, is not honest or healthy.

Andrew R. McGinn
Mississauga, Ontario

Great insight in understanding how Toyota has raised continuous improvement and employee involvement to a unique level, creating a genuine learning enterprise. The Toyota Production System (TPS) can be categorized in the following four elements:
1. Long Term Thinking - to add value to customers and society.
2. Right Process Will Produce Right Results- process oriented, one piece flow and a focus on quality.
3. Development of People - continuously improving and continuously developing.
4. Continuously Solving Root Problems - root cause and preventative actions, continuous learning.

I read this book when it was first published in 2004 and recently re-read it, curious to know how well Jeffrey Liker's explanation of Toyota's management principles and lean production values have held up. My conclusion? Very well.

No good purpose would be served by merely listing the 14 management principles, out of context. Liker devotes a separate chapter to each, carefully explaining not only what it is but also how it guides and informs everyone at all levels and in all areas of the Toyota organization. What Liker also accomplishes, and what cannot be adequately summarized in a review such as this, is to explain how all 12 principles are interdependent. Together, they serve as the company's DNA. In the Preface, he recalls asking Fujio Cho (President of Toyota Motor Company) what was unique about his company's remarkable success. His answer was quite simple: "The key to the Toyota Way and what makes Toyota stand out is not any of the individual elements...But what is important is having all the elements together as a system. It must be practiced every day in a very consistent manner." To understand Toyota's success, therefore, it is important to understand that lean production is not a methodology, it is literally a way of life.

The 14 principles are divided into four sections:

Having a long-term philosophy that drives a long-term approach to building a learning organization

Absolute faith that the right process will produce the right results

Adding value to the organization by developing its people and partners

Continuously solving root problems to drive organizational learning

As Liker points out, it is important to understand that the Toyota Production System is not the Toyota Way. TPS is the most systematic and highly developed example of what the principles of the Toyota Way can accomplish. The Toyota Way consists of the foundational principles of the Toyota culture, which allows the TPS to function so effectively.

How does lean improvement differ from traditional process improvement? "Briefly, wheras the traditional approach to process improvement focuses on local efficiencies, in a lean improvement initiatuve, most of the progress comes from a large number of non-value steps being squeezed out. For example, overproduction, delays, and wasted motion. In fact, the ultimate goal of lean manufacturing is to apply the ideal of one-piece flow to all business operations, from product design to launch, order taking, physical production, and shipment."Some of the differences are subtle but no less significant.

To repeat, anyone can read this book and then uncerstand what the Toyota Way is. Possessing a gourmet chef's recipe, however, does not ensure that a gourmet meal will be prepared. Toyota has its own way. Other companies must develop theirs based on their own "roots." In other words, lead from their traditional strengths but not be limited by them. In fact, companies may need to re-invent themselves, not once but several times. That is what Toyota did...and continues to do. Use operational excellence as a strategic weapon and the rewards and results will far outweigh the great effort required.

That said, Liker does provide 13 "general tips." The first is to begin with action in the technical system and then follow quickly with cultural change. Other suggestions include learning by doing first and training second, using value stream mapping to develop future state visions to help "learn to see," and being opportunistic in identifying opportunities for big financial impacts. They are provided with brief but precise explanations on Pages 302-307.

It remains for each person who reads this book to determine which of the 14 management principles are most relevant to her or his own enterprise, and then to determine how to translate each into effective action. Presumably Liker agrees with me that most companies have 3-5 areas in which "lean" initiatives are urgently needed. Developing an execution plan can be tricky, however, because all business transaction involve a process of some kind and improvement of one process inevitably has a direct impact on several others. Here's one possibility, suggested to me by a COO to whom I gave a copy of this book: Read the final chapter, Chapter 22, first. It's title is "Build Your Own Lean Learning Enterprise, Borrowing from the Toyota Way." He thinks that will provide an appropriate framework within which to proceed from Gary Convis' Foreword and Liker's Preface to the conclusion of Chapter 21. That suggestion is worth consideration.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Liker's Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way as well as Matthew Mays' The Elegant Solution: Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation, David Magee's How Toyota Became Toyota: Leadership Lessons from the World's Greatest Car company, and What Is Lean Six Sigma? co-authored by Michael L. George, David Rowlands, and Bill Kastle.

A few months after I bought this book, my boss asked me to take his place in the week-long Toyota Production System training in Kentucky, U.S.A., conducted for Bluegrass Automotive Manufacturers Association (BAMA) member companies and suppliers.

Based on that training and from the pages of this book, I believe much can indeed be achieved, if we walked the walk and not talked the talk. As one of the earlier reviewers of the book implied to say, we cannot play good golf by just reading what Tiger Woods wrote.

When I was at Kentucky, a number of engineers from another company (my plant's customer but a tier-1 supplier to OEMs) were there as well; I understood that company had been sending trainees to learn The Toyota Way for years. Now, possibly the best piece of knowledge a manufacturer can learn from Toyota Way is levelled production or levelled scheduling. My plant is a tier-2 supplier to this company I am referring to (the one which sent many trainees to Kentucky--and I asked why they couldn't level their orders so that my plant could level our production schedule. I was told their OEM customer do not level their orders too, so they couldn't level their orders to us lower level (tier-1 + n) suppliers.

Dr. Liker's book, among other things, dealt with levelled scheduling. I showed it to my boss, and he would have liked us to proceed if we got level orders. (Note that our big customers need to send us back empty product containers, everytime they sent a truck to pick up our goods. This doesn't happen all the time, so some times we couldn't produce what they needed from us, while we waited for the empty containers rather than produce-store in temporary packaging-then repack to the right containers when they arrived. Some times, we are forced to pack and ship in non-returnable, expendable containers; in this case the paper work and approval process to recover the packaging costs is a "no value add" waste. We protect the OEM, see that we don't shut them down for our non-shipment--which could potentially happen if we insisted all the time on getting the empty returnable containers first.)

The OEM customer of our own customer is a partner of Toyota in a joint-venture company. Our own customer is a partner as well of a joint-venture company that is among the best among Toyota Production System practitioners, trainor for BAMA members, supplier to both American and Japanese automakers. I am sure both the OEM and the tier-1 supplier know a lot about levelled production scheduling but has some "challenges" implementing it.

But if there is a will to walk the walk, I believe it can be done. Dr. Liker mentioned in his book it's done at Toyota plants in U.S.A. and Canada. American and Canadian companies, even those not jointly-owned by Japanese and Americans/Canadians should be able to do that -- Dr. Liker's book The Toyota Way should inspire us to do nothing less.

I strongly recommend it to process engineers, manufacturing engineers, and the management of American and Canadian companies in particular, and elsewhere in the world in general. Let's be inspired to read, and act.

We should realize though, that even in Toyota facilities in North America, as per the reviews sent in 2004 by Toyota team members, not everything is as the way Dr. Liker portrayed it in his book. My plant also dealt with a North American operation of a company described in Dr. Liker's book; I found the reality was almost the opposite of what I read on his book; the American OEM and American tier-1 supplier I have been dealing with, looked better, where return of reusable containers is concerned.

Don't be discouraged thinking we are so far behind; not all the things written in the book is 100% accurate as to the level of success achieved by others. We can and should catch up, if we have the will.

Different companies, and even different plants/operations of the same companies implementing The Toyota Way, can have different levels of successes. But we can all keep on improving -- continuous improvement will be our common goal. For those not yet at it, reading The Toyota Way is a good starting point.

If you don't mind giving me credit when you ordered the book, you can go to http://www.Multi-TradeOnline.com and you will find a link to Amazon Canada order process/shopping cart. If you have difficulty ordering the book from amazon.ca, contact Multi-Trade and we will help out (nights or weekends only).

By a long shot, The Toyota Way is the best book I have read on this topic. Finally, we have a clear picture of the most important elements of a world-class lean business system and insight into why so many companies fail on the journey. Jeff Liker, through his interviews with Toyota employees, highlights the fact that culture and respect for people play a pivotal role. "It's the people that bring the systems to life."

This book illustrates a common sense approach when considering the implementation of Lean principles and practices. The book essentially provides a road map that walks you through many of the basic principles and leaves one with a deeper understanding of the subject. I would make sure that you keep this one close at hand when implementing Lean in your organization.

Not exactly a page turner although the concept of TPS is interesting some of it is pretty dry reading.
The audio version worked great for me listened to it while commuting great use of something we are all short of "Time"

What a clear explanation of management principles. Anyone who runs any sort of company, or even a single household, can profit by reading this book. The many graphs are clear, clever, and illuminating. The book goes so much beyond the more simple "lean" theory I had read about before.

I think this book is the first one for a general audience that explains the management principles and business philosophy behind Toyota's worldwide reputation for quality and reliability.