Tag Toyota

Toyota Thinking: Leadership, Systems, and Continuous Improvement

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.

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Is TPS the “Best” System?

In a LinkedIn Group discussion, a member posted this question: “In the book TPS Taiichi Ohno gives in chapter 5 praises to Henry Ford. He refers to Henry Ford his book Today and Tomorrow, written in 1926. Henry Ford was…

The Purpose of Kaizen Events

I recently ran into David Meier, co-author of the outstanding books The Toyota Way Fieldbook and Toyota Talent. He was talking about kaizen events and he made a few interesting points from his time at Toyota: 1) He was only…

Mike Hoseus Webinar on Toyota Culture

Industry Week Webinar – To Register Technical note: I’ve been having some problems where “leanblog.org” gives a “404 not found” error, but “www.leanblog.org” works just fine. I am working on getting this resolved permanently. Thanks for your patience if this…

Lean Methods for Aerospace and Healthcare in Ontario

Article – How Toyota builds cars Here’s an article from Canada about how Toyota (an automaker) manages to be influential to Bombardier (maker of planes) and St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario (a fixer of people). The article, I think,…

Report: Toyota to Shut NUMMI in March

Toyota to end output at GM jv plant in March: report | Reuters The WSJ reports that Toyota is going to decide by the end of August. Even with sales picking up, this data point doesn’t look good: Toyota’s North…