The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer (GENERAL FINANCE & INVESTING)

Absolutely brilliant! Just shows how bankrupt our view of management in most western industries really is! The best management book out there! These principles can be applied to anything that needs managing from your own home life to the NHS!!! When British industry and institutions like the NHS are crying out for resources and efficiency savings it is astounding that they don’t take a leaf out of this book! Given the vast savings Toyota made by analysing and eliminating waste and reviewing every process in detail, any inefficient organisation cannot fail to benefit from copying them and reaping the rewards! This is a sobering read for anyone in management. Don’t be fooled by the usual lame management failure excuses, ‘lessons will be learnt’ etc. Why not avoid them? Toyota are No. 1 for a very good reason, they don’t accept the status quo - ‘There’s Always a Better Way!’ And they find it first. Unlike many British institutions, they lionise the whistleblower and sort out the problem before it costs in money, reputation, inefficiencies or harm to the customer. It’s all about doing the right thing! Without doubt an inspiring and incentivising tome. A ‘MUST READ’ FOR EVERYONE IN MANAGEMENT! Equally enlightening is the ‘companion’ book ‘Toyota Culture: The Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way’ by the same author(s).

The Toyota Way is a great book but boy is it hard work. It suffers badly from the US preoccupation with selling books by weight. The audio book gives the whole story flow. If you want to buy the book I would recommend that you also buy the audio to keep your strength up. Put together they will become fundamental to your efforts to drive cost reduction and remove waste from your business. You really can quickly address "Dead wood issues" effectively, without conflict and in an impartial way. This package will pay for itself in hours if you have a mind to make it do so just make sure you are prepared to be bold. The big issue is you have to read the book not just buy it! Not sure the "Cuddly" Toyota pitch is that accurate but its lovelly PR for them. The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer

About to embark on a lean, six sigma or any continuous improvement course or indeed just for someone wanting to improve how they work then pick this up first. Yes it is someone dated in regards its publication date however as a back story to how Toyota was born, how it managed to evolve from a small family business into the leading light of efficient, goal orientated manufacturing en mass then its a really useful book. For a hardcover copy it's an excellent value book. There are a number of tips and ideas within it to probably improve most workplaces without the need to pay for a lean course though it is of course no subsistute for a course. I have marked as four stars simply because some of the information is repeated, however It gave me a new insight into such things as corporate responsibility to the community that all employers now seem to shout about in mission statements that dominate their web pages, employees come first and all employees should be allowed and encouraged to contribute to continuous improvement is actually the foundation that serves lean manufacturing. Very good read, insight into Toyota and having a hard copy enables you to read digest and pass to a colleague or friend.

I came across this book almost by accident, looking for a few snippets for a paper on employee motivation I was writing and was hooked. I rarely read 'populist' business books getting bored with most after 25% because normally the rest is a rehash of what you have read, however this was different. The real shame I would say about this book is that the people who should read it are the very people who wont, HR people. Everybody has this vision of worker ants being driven constantly and forced to take part in improvement sessions in their own time. However Toyota are as passionate about the well-being of their people as they about the quality of their cars, if not more so, and an average 3% staff turnover suns that up well. Yes this book is a good book for any manager to read to understand how to run a better business however I hope they also realise the real strength of Toyota is not in their lean manufacturing processes

As consultant in companies that want to significantly improve their performance I give this book (plus Colins: Good to great) as required reading for the whole leadership team. Everibody reads a few chapters, they present it within six workshops, write exam, I lead discussion. Companies later cite this as a crucial activity that changed their thinking. Higly suggested!

Thoughtfully put together Excellent book Aplicable business principles or as a personal development plan Excellent work by Jeffrey liker Gold standard Must buy

A new edition of this book is needed to accommodate the changing trends and the times that we live in

In preparation for an internal LEAN training in one of my companies business groups, I read (or actually listened) this book to be a bit prepared. The book gives a good insight in the Toyota Production System and fully describes and explains the 14 principles. Although the Japanese words are flying around, it is easy to read and understand. This is the kind of book you want to read more than once, because there is so much in the 14 principles that we can use in our day to day life. So if you think LEAN is only for production. Pick up this book and find out that it can be applied in many areas of our business and in our lives.

Wer lernen will, wie ein Unternehmen langfristig erfolgreich entwickelt werden kann, wie Prozesse vernünftig zu gestalten sind und was wirksames Management jenseits all der narzisstischen Selbstbeweihräucherung tatsächlich bedeuten kann und bedeutet, kommt um dieses Buch m.E. nicht herum - und braucht nicht mehr sonderlich viele andere (Ich empfehle hier als m.E. optimale Ergänzung besonders noch das Buch "Führen, Leisten, Leben" von Fredmund Malik.) Darüber hinaus scheint mir noch wissenswert, dass Jeffrey K. Liker mit diesem Buch ein sehr praxisnaher Überblick über die Methoden der industriellen Produktion und deren Entwicklung in den letzten gut hundert Jahren gelungen ist. Man bekommt zudem quasi alle "Moden" der letzten Jahrzehnte sehr anschaulich vermittelt (u.a. Kaizen, Lean Production, Just-in-Time-Production) - und wundert sich dann wirklich, was aus diesen von Toyota in einem in sich konsistenten System entwickelten und integrierten, dort wirklich sinnvoll gelebten Ansätzen bei deren Übertragung nach Deutschland gemacht worden ist. Sehr aufschluss- und lehrreich!

日本人はとかく外来モノに弱いが、身近にいるトヨタという会社からも学ぶことは多いように思う。トヨタと言えばトヨタ生産方式が有名だが、本書は生産現場の技術的な話はあまりない。むしろ、その底流にある文化や哲学にフォーカスされている。そのため、自動車や製造業の枠を超えて多いに参考になると思う。本書を読んでいて強く思ったのは、「学習する組織」作りにこそトヨタの強みがあるということだ。カンバン方式で在庫を圧縮してコスト削減と聞くと、なんとなくそれらしく聞こえるが、カンバン方式での生産システムは、問題があれば、すぐにラインが止まってしまうことであり、リスクが非常に高い。しかし、敢えてそうすることで問題が顕在化され、問題を解決することの緊急性が高まる。そのため、初期にはトラブルが続出しても、長期的には頑健なシステムが出来上がるということである。また、そうした問題解決の舞台が設定され、かつそれを解決することが死活問題ともなれば、現場の問題解決への意識も変わり、組織が問題解決を日常とし、改善が確実に実施されるようになる。トヨタと言えば改善でも有名だ。改善が重要なことには誰も異論はないだろう。しかし、実際に改善活動が着実に実施されているケースは少ない。それは文化の違いと言ってしまえば、説明した気になっているが、どうしてそうした文化の違いが生まれるのかは説明されない。トヨタの行っていることは、カンバン方式や改善、終身雇用、5Whysなどが有名だが、個々に捉えていては意味がないことが本書を読めば理解出来る。トヨタの使っている各種の手法は、それらを有機的に使いこなすことで、「学習する組織」を作ることにこそ意味があるようだ。 本書を読んで、トヨタの強みに理解が深まったが、同時に容易には習得出来ないことも分かった。トヨタから学習したことを活かすためには相当な覚悟が必要なようだ。

Este libro es imprescindible para comprender la génesis de muchas aproximaciones "modernas" al management, y para entender también el rol definitivo de Valores y Cultura en el devenir de cualquier organización.

Ce livre est un très bon exposé des méthodes "japonaises" de production. Il a le mérite d'exposer l'historique des méthodes et des raisons qui ont poussé à les mettre en place. Il donne des exemples très concrets de mise en place de solutions pratiques et leur impact sur la réalité... Il promeut l'idéal de l'organisation apprenante sans tomber dans les superlatifs, en privilégiant les actes concrets et les raisonnements pragmatiques... L'auteur est très abordable, reste humble (ce qui change de beaucoup d'auteurs américains...) En cette période de frénésie Six Sigma, l'auteur est plus que circonspect et privilégie la méthode pragmatique plutôt que l'analyse statistique à tout crin, on retrouve ici les débats orient vs occident : les améliorations viennent-elles de l'accumulation de petits progrès ou au contraire de l'introduction de nouvelles technologies ?... La synthèse des méthodes Six Sigma et Lean permettra certainement de tirer le meilleur des deux mondes... Un énorme plus : sa géniale bibliographie ! Un livre à lire, à faire lire !

OK, like anything else, you have to dig for the truth. Dr Liker provides lots of material (regardless of Toyota itself) that you can learn from to help your business! I had a 2007 Toyota Camry and I doubt I would ever buy another one. It never got the gas mileage I was promised (oh yeah that was by a car lot) plus it wore out way too quickly. However, my review is on Dr Liker's book and not Toyota itself. He clearly showed a passion for a company who on some level was committed to quality at some point. That is what you want to learn from, not from what Toyota may or may not have devolved too. One piece flow: You can and better implement that in any business. Reducing waste: You can and better implement that in any business. Employee involvement: You can and better implement that in any business. Leveling workflow: You can and better implement that in any business. Make Mistakes: You can and better implement that in any business (or you aren't trying hard enough). Continuous Improvement: You can and better implement that in any business (another reviewer said that its better to change lots of things, and the two are not mutually exclusive - the book says something like "queue where you have to, but otherwise get rid of queues" which would apply to changes also). Standardized processes: You can and better implement that in any business. (This is why you go to eat at mom and pop restaurants and they are great when chef mom is there, but suck when they are off for the day.) I have learned a lot from The Toyota Way and I have implemented some of the things and they have helped our business substantially. Great book, the criticisms of Toyota are more than warranted, but if you are imaginative, you can use the tools in this book to help your business. Maybe you won't use all of them, but if you use 1 or 2 you will have paid for the price of this book many times over. (If Toyota wants to improve their cars, they need to buy this book and start working at the tail which is the car dealership and bring the Toyota Way to the sales process there first, then move down the line to the factory.)