Toyota Way–‘The 14 Principles of the Toyota Way’.

This video will introduce the 14 Principles of The Toyota Way. If you haven’t read this book it is highly recommended. This video will give you a good understanding of Toyota’s overall approach with their Toyota Production System.

The Toyota Way is a set of principles and practices that guide the management and operations of Toyota Motor Corporation. It is based on the principles of Lean manufacturing, which aim to maximize value and minimize waste in business processes. The Toyota Way has been instrumental in the success of Toyota and has been widely studied and adopted by other organizations around the world.

The Toyota Way is based on 14 principles, which are as follows:

Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals.
Create a continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface.
Use “pull” systems to avoid overproduction.
Level out the workload (heijunka).
Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time.
Standardized tasks and processes are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment.
Use visual control so no problems are hidden.
Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and processes.
Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others.
Develop exceptional people and teams who follow your company’s philosophy.
Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them improve.
Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation (genchi genbutsu).
Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options; implement decisions rapidly (nemawashi).
Become a learning organization through relentless reflection (hansei) and continuous improvement (kaizen).

By following these principles, Toyota has been able to create a highly efficient and innovative organization that is able to continuously improve and adapt to changing market conditions.

Lean Quotes

“Something is wrong if workers do not look around each day, find things that are tedious or boring, and then rewrite the procedures. Even last month’s manual should be out of date.” ~Taiichi Ohno
“If you are going to do TPS (Toyota Production System) you must do it all the way. You also need to change the way you think. You need to change how you look at things.” ~Taiichi Ohno
“I say an hour lost at a bottleneck is an hour out of the entire system. I say an hour saved at a non-bottleneck is worthless. Bottlenecks govern both throughput and inventory.” ~Eli M. Goldratt
“Andon works only when you teach your employees the importance of bringing problems to the surface so they can be quickly solved.” ~Jeffrey K. Liker
“For much of Toyota’s history, we have ensured the quality and reliability of our vehicles by placing a device called an andon cord on every production line – and empowering any team member to halt production if there’s an assembly problem. Only when the problem is resolved does the line begin to move again.” ~Akio Toyoda.
“Supply Chain is like nature, it is all around us.” ~Dave Waters
“No matter how many improvements have been made, every process is still full of waste and rife with opportunity to improve.” ~Jeffrey K. Liker