Kiichiro Toyoda founded Toyota Motor Corp in 1933, and the company has gone on to great success, with indications that it will become the world’s largest automobile company in a year or 2 or so, bypassing GM.
The New York Times has a new article describing how Toyota did it, attributing their winning ways to the fabled Toyota Production System, that features Kaizen, Jidoka, Just-in-Time and to the corporate culture, which includes ways of thinking about teamwork, products and efficiency.
It’ll be interesting to see how long Toyota can keep it up, what with rising pension costs, healthcare obligations, forex exposure and the risks inherent in offshoring and outsourcing. A translation of Toyoda can be found in the title of this post.
From 0 to 60 to World Domination – NYT, Feb 18 2007
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Hello just thought i would tell you something.. This is twice now i’ve landed on your blog in the last 3 weeks searching for completely unrelated things. Spooky or what?
“Toyota” means “abundant rice field?” Or does it mean “indeed?”