Jeffrey K. Liker Quotes

A cornerstone of the Toyota Way is “challenge

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business. — Henry Ford, innovating automaker

Be responsive to the day-by-day shifts in customer demand rather than relying on computer schedules and systems to track wasteful inventory.

The vision for Lean, I believe, should be achieving operational excellence based on a clearly defined value system and a way of engaging people in Continuous Improvement. The goals can generally be summarized as Safety, Morale, Quality, Cost, and Productivity.

Standardization Is the Basis for Continuous Improvement and Quality

every Toyota team member goes through a basic set of development steps at each stage of her development, following the process of basic learning by copying exactly (shu), mastering the basics so that they become second nature (ha), and becoming so masterful at the basics that she can go beyond these and improvise (ri).

You do not simply, mindlessly, implement the best practices. You have to think deeply about your condition. If the “best practice” seems like a useful countermeasure for your problem, you should learn from the best practice; however, what may have worked in some other place may not work for you without adjustment and even further improvement.

Respect: We respect others, make every effort to understand each other, take responsibility and do our best to build mutual trust.
Teamwork: We stimulate personal and professional growth, share the opportunities of development and maximize individual and team performance.

One Toyota executive stated the sentiment well, “Team members are the only appreciating asset we have. Everything else starts depreciating from the moment we buy it.

Automobiles account for about 20 percent of the carbon dioxide from all human sources, yet about one fourth of the world's population enjoys their benefits.

Senior management is simply a flag bearer when a business decision is made. It is of no use unless others follow the flag. — Eiji Toyoda, former chairman of Toyota

Every team member has the responsibility to stop the line every time they see something that is out of standard. That's how we put the responsibility for quality in the hands of our team members.

Toyota’s success, in short, is not rooted in its application of a standard “lean” methodology to manufacturing, nor can it be found in any internally implemented equivalent of Six Sigma. Instead, it is rooted in its leaders. More specifically, it can be found in the approach that a Toyota leader takes, seeing self-development and training others as the only possible path, not only for finding the right solution for the problem at hand, but for constantly and consistently improving performance day after day.

They started with no budget and had to justify every cost — and were told that only those costs that were absolutely essential to making product for the customer would be approved.

Continuous improvement means getting better every day and is the driver for building a sustainable enterprise. Only those at the gemba can understand the problems fast enough to react quickly. Continuous improvement depends on a different paradigm of the role of the human — all humans are problem detectors and problem correctors — thinking scientifically.