Toyota is often cited as the inspiration for Lean, but its success is rooted in leadership behaviors, management systems, and a deep commitment to learning—not tools or slogans. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on Toyota’s approach to quality, continuous improvement, psychological safety, and respect for people. Many of these posts explore what leaders outside Toyota often misunderstand—and what truly matters if they hope to learn from Toyota rather than copy it.
I did manage to buy a book that was published by NUMMI to celebrate their 10th anniversary. "10 Years of Quality & Teamwork" is the title.
Here is the cover and I'll share a few things that caught my attention inside. It's interesting to think through this book in the context of :
Tesla (the current owners of the building - see my past blog post)
Healthcare organizations
It's Monday morning in Nagoya, Japan as I write this. I'm still jet-lagged and up early, so here's a blog post after all...
Sunday, I had the chance to visit the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology in Nagoya. There's so much that I can blog about...I'll write more posts about my museum visit in the future.
In this post though, I share a little bit about some of the books that they sell - in English and Japanese...
My guests for Episode #300 of the podcast are Tracey and Ernie Richardson, authors of the excellent book titled:
The Toyota Engagement Equation: How to Understand and Implement Continuous Improvement Thinking in Any Organization
There's much to admire about Toyota and even regular readers of this blog might throw the "fanboy" label at me. Toyota employees in San Antonio have a lot of positive things ("pros") to say online about working there. But, the overwhelming "con" is the rotating work schedules - being on days for two weeks then switching to nights for two weeks. Where do a priority on safety and "respect for people" enter into the discussion about which shift pattern is safest, most effective, and most fair?
Tomorrow, with the entire KaiNexus team, I'm going to visit the Toyota truck plant in San Antonio, the plant referred TMMTX. The 15 of us will be there in closed toed shoes and all other required clothing to learn about the Toyota Production System, Kaizen (continuous improvement), and Lean.
I've blogged about it on the KaiNexus blog. I asked the KaiNexus team to say a little bit about what they hope to learn in the visit and you can read their comments it here.
In this post, I share a 24-minute tour preview webinar that I put together, links to past tour blog posts, and more.
Yesterday, I saw this headline from the Associated Press:
"Tatsuro Toyoda, former head of Toyota, dies at 88"
He passed away on December 30, 2017. I offer my condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues.
In this post, I share some of his history and some reflections from two Americans who worked with him directly.
In today's post, I share and write about this message from Akio Toyoda that was posted online:
“Making Ever-better Cars and Human Resource Development: The Forces That Power Sustainable Growth“
Here is the headline from the Dallas Morning News: "How Toyota improved Parkland Hospital's ER -- with purple lights."
I'll give credit to Dr. Fred Cerise, the CEO of Parkland Memorial Hospital, for reaching out to Toyota and TSSC for help...
As I've been writing about "process behavior charts" - a simple, yet effective method for charting and reacting to (or not overreacting to) metrics, it's made curious what some of the modern Toyota books say about metrics and performance measures.... or at least the first two in The Toyota Way series.
TL;DR: Many Lean healthcare job postings fail because they expect a single mid-level hire to “fix” culture, strategy, and results–while executives delegate leadership instead of practicing it. Overemphasis on certifications, industry “insider” status, and toolkits (Lean, Six Sigma, PDSA) misses…
I’m teaching a daylong class on Lean healthcare today in San Antonio. It’s something I’ve done twice a year for the past four years or so. My day here is part of a six-month program for healthcare professionals and different…
it's great to see an 11 year old thinking like an engineer and an entrepreneur. He's the son of a Toyota "operational excellence" consultant. For those who try to unfortunately equate Lean to a "clean desk policy," the father's desk is a great argument against banning family photos and an illustration of why Lean isn't about putting tape around everything...
