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Topic: Management Improvement
Toyota Home - Applying the Toyota Production System to Home Building from Evolving Excellence
From Toyota’s web site:
Concentrating the knowledge and technology of the Toyota Group to the housing business, Toyota’s house making is based on the “Skeleton & Infill” approach. Based on careful consideration of customer lifestyles, three different structures have been developed for the Toyota Home line-up.
I often find myself wishing I could deal with Toyota instead of whatever company I am getting poor results from. The Evolving Excellence post mentions “Lean Construction is not really new.” Not only that, queuing theory, lean thinking (in general), customer focus and process improvement are not unformed concepts that need a great deal of work before they can be applied in the real world.
Still many organizations don’t apply many concepts that have been proven effective for decades. So I hope Toyota gets into any business that continues to provide lousy value to the consumer (at least those where that consumer is me). I wish they would create their own credit card (they offer Toyota branded Visa and MasterCard credit cards now, in Japan), provide high speed internet service and run an airline.
Toyota is probably too smart to try and run an airline in the US (only Southwest seems to be able to that profitably). I believe there is a good chance they will manufacturer airplane components and other transportation areas (mass transit, personal transportation, shipping etc.). The transportation area is where it seems to me expansion into new businesses makes the most sense.
On the Toyota web site they list the following areas of non-automotive Toyota business: financial services, information and communications, marine and most surprisingly Biotechnology and Afforestation. Toyota states: “Biotechnology may seem far removed from the auto industry. It is, however, closely related to automaking in the context that they are both aiming to achieve a sustainable society, and their close relationship can be seen in the new Raum, launched in May 2003, which uses parts made from bioplastics.”
Even with Toyota’s explanation the biotechnology business seems like a business with little connection to their existing operations to me.
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July 4th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
[...] Yes, today incredible innovation is taking place at companies like Google but this is not new. Toyota has understood the importance of innovation (biotechnology - Hybrid cars 1993 - moving into car manufacturing - robots) for a long time (and so have many many more: IBM, Disney, Nike, NASA, DARPA, Apple, Microsoft, Wal Mart, Sony, Merck, Intel, Chalres Schwab, 3M, Amazon, Da Vinci, Miles Davis, Picasso, Edison, Fosbury, Einstein…). And given the date lets add the United States of America to the innovation list. [...]
July 7th, 2006 at 11:13 am
[...] Toyota: Way, Way Off-Road by Ian Rowley. Business Week has an article exploring the non-automotive Toyota, as we have mentioned previously: Toyota Robots - Toyota as Homebuilder - Toyota Engineers a New Plant: the Living Kind. Toyota controls dozens of businesses that have virtually nothing to do with automaking, ranging in size from resort developer Nagasaki Sunset Marina (77% owned by Toyota), with just five employees, to Toyota Financial Services Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary with 8,000 workers and $1.7 billion in operating profits in fiscal 2005. All told, revenues for Toyota’s nonauto businesses jumped 15.5%, to $10.3 billion, in the year through March, and are up 50% since 2003. While last year’s total still represented less than 6% of Toyota’s overall sales of $180 billion, if broken out the company’s sideline businesses would rank No. 192 among companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. [...]
December 6th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe said robotics will be a core business for the company in coming years. He says Toyota will test out its robots at hospitals, Toyota-related facilities and other places starting next year. He hopes to see partner robots in use by 2010. ‘We want to create robots that are useful for people in everyday life’…
March 7th, 2008 at 7:16 am
“why is Honda playing with robots? Or, for that matter, airplanes? Honda is building a factory in North Carolina to manufacture the Hondajet, a sporty twin-engine runabout that carries six passengers. Or solar energy? Honda has established a subsidiary to make and market thin-film solar-power cells. Or soybeans?…”