Jeffrey K. Liker Quotes

The Toyota Way, written by the co-author of this book, Jeffrey Liker, summarized the management principles of Toyota in a 4P model: Philosophy, Process, People, and Problem Solving

The Toyota Production System can be realized only when all the workers become tortoises. (Ohno, 1988)

A cornerstone of the Toyota Way is “challenge

Challenge: We form a long-term vision, meeting challenges with courage and creativity to realize our dreams.
Kaizen: We improve our business operations continuously, always driving for innovation and evolution.
Genchi Genbutsu: We practice Genchi Genbutsu — believing in going to the source to find the facts to make correct decisions, build consensus, and achieve goals at our best speed.

It is comforting to believe that if we could only implement the right cells and other lean tools to eliminate waste in the process, we could let it rip and get great results forever . . . or at least for a long time. But processes do not work that way.

Toyota’s concept of a good process is one that expects and reveals problems, without blame, not one that is problem-free.

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).

Most Business Processes Are 90% Waste and 10% Value-Added Work

Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation (genchi genbutsu).