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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Toyota marks 50 years in U.S.

This month marks a pretty significant milestone, 50 years since Toyota first started selling cars in the U.S. A collection of articles:Toyota marks 50 years in U.S. Dallas Morning News It’s important to keep in mind that Toyota was hardly…

How Toyota Became #1, and Will Again

I’ve mentioned this book before, coming out Nov 1, it’s called How Toyota Became #1: Leadership Lessons from the World’s Greatest Car Company. I had the exciting chance to have dinner tonight with the author, David Magee. I have, in…

How Curiosity Empowers Toyota

Business Week Article Here is a new article from Business Week, which also focuses on the upcoming book How Toyota Became #1: Leadership Lessons from the World’s Greatest Car Company. I’m going to have a chance to meet the author,…

The Patriots are like Toyota?

Unbeaten Patriots see room for improvement – NFL – Yahoo! Sports The above headline blew me away this morning. The Patriots have basically been perfect this year. Tom Brady is completing 80% of his passes. They’ve won every game by…

Free Peeks into Taiichi Ohno’s Book

I think I’ve mentioned this resource before, the free content that is online in Google Books. Even though I own Taiichi Ohno’s book Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production, but it so much easier to search the book online. You…

Upcoming Book: How Toyota Became #1

I was just contacted this morning by David Magee, the author of the upcoming book How Toyota Became #1: Leadership Lessons from the World’s Greatest Car Company I’m hoping to do a Podcast interview with David and I should be…

What About The Other Car Makers?

by Dan Markovitz This blog has commented (here and here) on the WSJ’s rush to predict the folly of just-in-time manufacturing in the wake of the earthquake last week that crippled Japanese auto production. (“Blame it on kanban, the just-in-time…

The JIT Sky Didn’t Fall

Forbes.com – Partial Production to Start Tuesday Reuters Article – Toyota to Resume Full Production Wednesday What do the Chicken Littles at the WSJ have to say now? After the earthquake in Japan last week, the WSJ ran a predictable…