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Management Improvement (Deming, lean thinking, six sigma, innovation, customer focus...) Posts on Articles

Posts that link to interesting articles. Recommended posts: Going Lean in Health Care - Management Advice Failures - Ackoff's F-laws: Common Sins of Management - Problems Caused by Performance Appraisal - Google Management - Box on Quality - What Is Muda? - Making Changes and Taking Risks - Forget Targets - Lean Material Handling
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May 7, 2008

Toyota Execution Not Close to Being Copied

The Open Secret of Success

Toyota’s innovations, by contrast, have [focused] on process rather than on product, on the factory floor rather than on the showroom. That has made those innovations hard to see. But it hasn’t made them any less powerful.

At the core of the company’s success is the Toyota Production System, which took shape in the years after the Second World War, when Japan was literally rebuilding itself, and capital and equipment were hard to come by. A Toyota engineer named Taiichi Ohno turned necessity into virtue, coming up with a system to get as much as possible out of every part, every machine, and every worker. The principles were simple, even obvious - do away with waste, have parts arrive precisely when workers need them, fix problems as soon as they arise. And they weren’t even entirely new - Ohno himself cited Henry Ford and American supermarkets as inspirations. But what Toyota has done, better than any other manufacturing company, is turn principle into practice. In some cases, it has done so with inventions, like the andon cord, which any worker can pull to stop the assembly line if he notices a problem, or kanban, a card system that allows workers to signal when new parts are needed.

Very true, except one thing. Toyota’s innovation is not limited to process and execution. Toyota’s long term vision results in very dramatic innovation (that granted is not getting the press today - check back in 20 years, I think you will be reading about it then). For some examples see: Toyota’s Partner Robot, Toyota as Homebuilder, Toyota Engineers a New Plant: the Living Kind and The Birth of Prius.

A company truly driven by a focus on continual improvement, respect for all employees and reasonable executive compensation might be a company serious about adopting Deming and Toyota management principles. It is hard for me to imagine such a situation that doesn’t truly seek, as the primary aim of the organization, to benefit many stakeholders (workers, owners, suppliers, customers…) not just executives (or just executives, board and owners…).

Related: Toyota Management Develops the New Camry - Better and Different - Deming and Toyota - Toyota Keeps Improving - More Positive Press for Toyota Management - Good Execution is Important

April 24, 2008

Toyota Canada CIO on Genchi Genbutsu and Kaizen

What’s driving Toyota Canada’s success? - CIO reveals all

for Hao Tien, chief information officer (CIO) at Toyota Canada Inc. those two Japanese phrases – Genchi Genbutsu (go and see) and Kaizen (continuous improvement) really capture it all.

the innovation wasn’t in the technology, but in the way the various partners were brought together to agree upon processes, which were then consistently executed. CustomerOne is only project of its kind in the Toyota empire.

A computer system links activities across multiple customer touch points, and analyzes data from the more than 13,000 daily service visits to Toyota dealers across the country. The system flags major repeat problems and Toyota Motor Corp. head office in Japan is informed so engineers can be assigned to make repairs to designs or manufacturing, if necessary.

“For instance if a call comes into us at Toyota Canada, the dealer knows about it. So if they go back to the dealer for services, everyone offers the same resolution of the problem.” In the four years since its launch CustomerOne was has been a runaway success. Tien cites some of the more tangible benefits this initiative has brought about. They include:

* Cutting down the customer problem resolution from weeks to an average of three days through this initiative alone;
* Early detection of customer dissatisfaction in services
* Reducing detection of product defects (from months to days).

The Toyota Canada CIO talks about the tremendous business benefits from this seamless freeflow of information. “When a defect is detected at the dealership, the next day it would up to our engineering department.” The speed at which information traverses is of immense value – especially when new vehicles are launched. Tien cited an example.

“We recently launched a new Toyota Corolla [model]. If there were a problem with a door knob of the vehicle, the plant would know about it and a fix would be put in place.”

An article well worth reading. Related: Toyota IT Overview - Lessons from Toyota’s IT Strategy - Good Customer Service Example at Toyota - Software Supporting Processes Not the Other Way Around

February 24, 2008

Toyota Presses On

At Toyota, a Global Giant Reaches for Agility

With plants in 27 countries, more new factories under construction and workers speaking languages that include Russian and Turkish, Toyota’s top executives are trying a difficult balancing act - replicating the company’s success and operating principles in other countries while ceding more control to these new outposts at the same time.

Next year, it expects to sell more than 10.4 million cars worldwide, double what it sold in 2000.

At Motomachi, more than 3,000 tasks on the assembly line have been translated into video manuals that are displayed on laptop computers above 30 simulated workstations, situated where their functions would be carried out inside the factory.

The videos show everything from the correct way to hold a screw to the best way to hold an air gun so that a worker’s hand will not tire in a few hours. This month, workers from Toyota’s plant in Thailand took part in training required for jobs in their plant’s paint shop. Listening as an interpreter translated from Japanese into Thai, the workers were shown how to bend their knees and spray a water gun across a clear panel of Plexiglas.

Yet another article on the management of Toyota. And here is another: Toyota heir slowly following in family footsteps. And another: Toyota explores more efficient methods to build cars.

Related: 12 Stocks for 10 Years Feb 2008 Update - No Excessive Senior Executive Pay at Toyota - New Articles on Toyota Management - Toyota’s Effort to Stay Toyota - More Positive Press for Toyota Management - Toyota in the US Economy

November 22, 2007

Toyota’s Effort to Stay Toyota

Toyota’s All-Out Drive To Stay Toyota

“We are making every effort not to lose our DNA,” says Shigeru Hayakawa, president of Toyota Motor North America.

Just in case St. Angelo forgets any of his Toyota training, he has someone watching his back. His retired predecessor, Gary Convis, still gets paid to advise him. That’s an idea Toyota imported from Japan, where the company asks retiring engineers to stick around to mentor young employees. The ranks of these old-timers are growing rapidly as the company tries to safeguard its culture. Last year, Toyota rehired 650 of the 1,200 skilled workers eligible for retirement in Japan, and will soon have 3,000 of these folks on its payroll.

Related: lean manufacturing portal - Toyota management posts - Toyota IT Overview - New Toyota CEO’s Views

November 5, 2007

“2007 has been a difficult year for Toyota”

I find the quote “2007 has been a difficult year for Toyota” found in The Dings and Dents of Toyota a bit amusing. Toyota has had some problems as the article notes like product recalls and losing a handful of employees to Ford and Chrysler. They are about even with GM in worldwide sales and posted a profit of nearly $14 Billion (I believe maybe 20 companies have ever earned that much in any year) in the year ending March 2007 and continue to make huge profits this year (Toyota reported their best quarter ever in August). With difficulty like this who needs success :-)

“Toyota’s short-term problems are exaggerated,” said James P. Womack, a manufacturing expert and co-author of The Machine That Changed the World… But Mr. Womack said he was concerned that Toyota might be losing its laserlike focus, just as it marked two important anniversaries this year: its 70th birthday as an automobile company, and its 50th year selling cars in the United States. “Toyota has to rethink its purpose in life,”

He is right that the problems are exaggerated. I agree that Toyota has to maintain a laser-like focus on improvement. I don’t agree that they need to rethink their purpose in life (I have a feeling that is taken out of context). They need to maintain and maybe even increase their commitment to their purpose in life.

In our post New Toyota CEO’s Views in 2005, we quote the new CEO, Katsuaki Watanabe:

We should never be satisfied with the current status. In each division, function, or region, we still have numerous problems to cope with. We need to identify each one of those tasks or problems and fully recognize them and pursue the causes. This needs to be done by all the people working for Toyota.

He was right then and that is true now.

Related: Reacting to Product Problems - Jim Press, Toyota N. American President, Moves to Chrysler - Toyota Homes - Respect for People at Toyota

October 27, 2007

Bringing Lean Principles to Service Industries

Bringing ‘Lean’ Principles to Service Industries by Julia Hanna

“One of the important lessons we’ve seen on the ground is how Wipro approached the launch of this lean initiative,” Staats says. “They didn’t come out with big banners and say, ‘OK, today your work is lean work, and yesterday it wasn’t.’ They started with a small group and recruited other people from there. It was a very controlled experimentation.”

In their research, Staats and Upton document how the use of lean principles affected the workflow at Wipro. The concept of “kaizen,” or continuous improvement, for example, resulted in a more iterative approach to software development projects versus a sequential, “waterfall” method in which each step of the process is completed in turn by a separate worker.

By sharing mistakes across the process, the customer and project team members benefit individually and collectively from increased opportunities to learn from their errors; the project also moves along more quickly because bugs are discovered in the system earlier in the development process.

Iteration is very important. It is important in proper use of the PDSA cycle - many quick iterations are much better than one long slow one. And for software application development it is an excellent strategy.

I think iteration is even more important in software application development than most other areas (for now anyway) because many stakeholders cannot visualize what they need from software. Therefore attempts to force rigid requirements up front fail. No matter how much effort you put in the stakeholder just doesn’t know until they see it and use it - then they can tell you what they want changed. so design a system that works given this - iteration and agile development work very well.

Related: lean thinking articles - Experiment Quickly and Often - Management Consulting (what does the consultants web site show?) - Indian Firms Learning From Toyota (on Wipro posted here in 2005) - posts on improving software development - Not Lean Retailing

October 24, 2007

Strategic Deployment: How To Think Like Toyota

Strategic Deployment: How To Think Like Toyota:

Hoshin kanri is fundamental to Toyota’s success today, says Dennis, currently an instructor at the Lean Enterprise Institute. He says Toyota’s ability to grasp the situation, identify two or three obstacles, develop meaningful plans to address those obstacles, and deploy them “is outstanding.”

Another company using strategy deployment, HNI Corp., has used a policy deployment mechanism for more than a decade. The office furniture manufacturer, an IndustryWeek Best Manufacturing Company for five consecutive years, deploys its strategy companywide using a Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) sequence that moves from a three-year corporate plan to a unit-level development process that creates one-year plans with action steps. Progress reviews and annual reviews evaluate progress and then the cycle starts again, explains Todd Murphy, vice president and general manager of The HON Co.’s Cedartown, Ga., facility, a 2005 IW Best Plants winner. HON is the largest operating company within HNI Corp.

Also central to policy deployment at HON is rapid continuous improvement, or RCI, a company culture focused on making breakthrough improvements. Further aligning policy deployment at HON is its reward system, which is linked to the achievement of policy deployment goals.

October 20, 2007

How Curiosity Empowers Toyota

How Curiosity Empowers Toyota by Keith McFarland:

As I read Magee’s book one idea kept surfacing in my mind. Throughout its history, Toyota appears to have put an emphasis on an important but oft-overlooked characteristic: Curiosity. You can trace Toyota’s institutionalized curiosity back to its founder, Sakichi Toyoda (1867-1930), who became interested in improving the effectiveness of weaving looms, and who went on to revolutionize weaving technology in Japan and secure more than 100 patents on his ideas. You might say Toyota’s founder was “loopy” for looms. Not content just to build the best looms in Japan, Toyoda traveled to Europe, toured leading Western loom makers, and carried key ideas back to Japan. Son Kiichiro Toyoda carried on his father’s tradition of curiosity—and a visit to a Detroit auto plant in the 1920s inspired him to move a renamed Toyota into the car business.

For more than 70 years, Toyota’s curiosity has allowed it to build, brick by brick, a commercial fortress. It has scanned the globe for the best ideas—from styling to manufacturing to quality management—and imbued those ideas with a power that often surprises even the people who came up with them in the first place.

Curiosity seems like just what a cat (or company) needs to grow and learn and improve :-)

Related: Curious Cat management articles - posts on the Toyota Management System - lean manufacturing portal

September 24, 2007

Danaher Expands Lean Thinking One Acquisition at a Time

Sybron Focuses on Operations

Nearly 18 months into becoming part of Danaher Corp., life is different at Sybron Dental Specialties Inc. “Sybron was really a sales and marketing focused organization … and operations (were) part of supporting that,” said Don Tuttle, president of specialty products for Sybron, which is moving from Orange to Anaheim next year. “What Danaher brought to us, and has been successful with, is bringing us an operations focus.”

Sybron has adopted principles known as Danaher Business Systems, which he called a “playbook” to make the company run as a more efficient team. It’s centered on “kaizen,” a quality improvement process that grew out of the teaching of W. Edwards Deming. The focus on manufacturing and operations, combined “with our sales and marketing expertise (has) made us a much stronger company,” Tuttle said.

Danaher continues to do a good job improving management practices one purchase at a time. I continue to eye Danaher as a stock to buy but have not bought yet.

Related: Danaher Practicing Lean Thinking - Lean Thinking at Danaher - Tilting at Ludicrous CEO Pay - lean manufacturing directory

July 8, 2007

New Articles on Toyota Management

Harvard Business Review has a new article on Toyota that both the Elegant Solutions blog (by Matthew E. May author of Elegant Solutions: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation - via: lean blog) and Got Boondoggle, have raved about.

Amazing HBR Interview with Toyota President Watanabe on Elegant Solutions:

Pick up the latest issue of Harvard Business Review (July/August double issue) for a real treat: a fantastic interview with Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe. This is a ground-breaking piece of journalism and revelation from the traditionally tight-lipped Toyota leadership, and Thomas Stewart does a truly masterful job of asking all the right questions. My hat’s off to him. And to President Watanabe, for truly candid answers. Rarely do you find leaders this frank, honest, and accountable.

What’s Next for Toyota?, Got Boondoogle:

The new manufacturing process at Takaota will completely change the way Toyota makes cars. We call them the “simple, slim, and speedy” production system. Right now our processes are complicated, so when a problem occurs, it is difficult to identify the cause.

We will have more flexibility than ever before: Each line at Takaota will be able to produce eight different models, so the plant will produce 16 models on two lines compared with the four or five it used to produce on three lines. In the old plan we used to make 220,000 vehicles a year on each line; now we will be able to make 250,000 units on each line. Toyota needs such radical changes today.

For those people thinking they were catching up on Toyota that might not be good news. I suppose you could hope that Toyota will fail, but that doesn’t seem likely given past experience (and there continued vigilance). I don’t think we will see them spend $40 billion on robots and then decide they can’t make it work (GM in the 1980’s). But it is much easier to fail that succeed, so it is possible.
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June 16, 2007

Innovation Thinking with Christensen

In my opinion Clayton Christensen offers truly insightful ideas on innovation and management. He presents the rare management advice that is not only good but also new - an incredibly rare combination. The current issue of Business Week includes an interview with him: Clayton Christensen’s Innovation Brain:

Yes. The problem is when you say “listen to your customers,” your customers are only going to lead you in a direction that they want to go in. Generally, that will never lead you to disruptive growth. You’ve got to find that new set of customers, and listen to them and follow them. That’s the trick. Once you have customers, they hold you captive to their needs.

It’s hard for me to see what will disrupt Google. I think they’ve got a pretty good run ahead of them.

While some of Christensen’s ideas are new he also builds on existing ideas. The idea on customer focus being a potential trap was discussed by Deming a great deal. Interesting point on Google, I must agree, though it makes me nervous to think that way: it is easier to mess up success than to fix a mess. I will be interested to read his ideas on the health care system.

Related: Six Keys to Building New Markets by Unleashing Disruptive Innovation - Management Improvement Leaders - articles by Christensen - The Innovators Solution - What Job Does Your Product Do?
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June 6, 2007

Lean Progress at Label Printing Companies

Continuous Improvement, an article from the Label and Narrow Web trade magazine (”for the narrow web segment of converting and printing”), is an article with some nice anecdotes of successfully applying lean thinking.

“The dollar ramifications are huge. We pay bills in 10 days now because we have fewer bills to pay, and now we have discounts. We made back the money we paid last year in interest on our credit line because we have so much less inventory. In 18 months we took our inventory from well over $400,000 to under $200,000, and in those 18 months the company grew 20 percent.

“The next area we focused on was our press benches. We got rid of everybody’s tool boxes and standardized. No other tools in the building. We went on a shopping spree at Home Depot, we moved out extra work benches, set up shadow boards, and mounted all the new tools on them. If a tool is missing at the end of a week they pay for it. We cleaned up the floors, and now the shop is really open and clean looking. The next step is to put up modular walls and install air conditioning.”

Luminer Converting has been assisted in its Lean venture by the New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program; similar operations exist in almost all US states. “Through them we received a grant which paid for 90 percent of the consultancy fees we incurred,” Spina notes.

via: Lean Printing - a new lean blog

Related: It’s Easy Being Lean - Wisconsin Manufacturing - lean manufacturing articles - Transforming With Lean
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May 11, 2007

Six Sigma at Cummins

Six Sigma winning supply-chain converts

“More and more of our decisions are made after data is collected and analysis done. It’s less of a gut feel and more data-based.”
On any given day, Cummins has 2,500 active Six Sigma projects involving 10,000 of its 34,000 employees, Strodtbeck said.

Next year, senior managers at Cummins will be required to have Six Sigma certification before they can switch jobs or be promoted. “Six Sigma is headed toward being a condition of employment,” Strodtbeck said.

“In 10 years, will we be calling it Six Sigma? I don’t think so,” said Roger Schmenner, associate dean for Indianapolis programs with the Kelley School of Business. “We’ll have something else with a new name. Will it use the same statistical techniques? Absolutely, because some of these things are immutable.”

Six sigma has persisted for well beyond a 10 years already. I must admit I think the name “six sigma” is not the best but it seems to be holding its own. Six sigma is obviously achieving results many companies find worthwhile as they continue to grow their efforts year after year. While I would agree I think it is likely six sigma efforts will transform and be renamed within the next ten years, in many organizations, the momentum seems to be strong still - which is very rare for a management approach. I agree that is due to the benefits of applying statistical tools, education and focus on specific project based success.

Related: six sigma portal - Six Sigma Results - Can six sigma fix bad management? - Seduce Them With Six Sigma Success - 6 Sigma Conference 1999

April 13, 2007

Lean is Not Mean

Lean and Not Mean: Simple Management Most Effective:

The “pull” rather than “push” point of view first pioneered by the Japanese car manufacturers means that, in lean, everything is seen from the customer’s point of view. Production is defined by the demand from the customer instead of the push from the manufacturer.

“The driver of lean is all from the customer perspective,” says Holmes. “When we talk about value, its value from the customer’s viewpoint. So in any project, we look at the ratio of time in process versus value added time.

This article is another simple overview: I like the title. For more information, see some of our favorite lean articles and our lean manufacturing blog posts.

April 10, 2007

The Triumph of Lean Production

The triumph of lean production by Steve Schifferes

Laura pulls a cord, stopping the production line - and prompting her five fellow workers on trim line three to crowd round. They soon see why it is not screwed in properly and fix the problem. “I don’t like to let something like that go,” she says. “That’s really important for people who buy our cars.” Workers at the Toyota plant in Georgetown, Kentucky, pull the cord 2,000 times a week - and their care is what makes Toyota one of the most reliable, and most desired, brands in the US.

In contrast, workers at Ford’s brand-new truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan, pull the cord only twice a week

Just think about that Toyota’s Georgetown plant (seen by many as one of the best examples of lean manufacturing) stops the line 2,000 a week. Do you think your organizations systems are as well designed as the Georgetown plant? Does your organization stop to examine what needs to be improved with anything approaching that level (granted Georgetown is large but even so…)?

Related: Andon definition - Jidoka definition - Ford and Managing the Supplier Relationship - The Georgetown Kentucky Way - Toyota’s New Texas Plant
(more…)

March 27, 2007

Metrics and Software Development

Lean-based Metrics for Agile CM Environments by by Brad Appleton, Robert Cowham and Steve Berczuk:

Measure Up! Don’t use metrics to measure individuals in a way that compares their performance to others or isolates the value of their contributions from the rest of the team. The last of the seven principles of Lean software development tells us to “Optimize across the whole.” When measuring value or performance, it is often better to measure at the next level-up. Look at the big-picture because the integrated whole is greater than the sum of its decomposition into parts. Metrics on individuals and subparts often create suboptimization of the whole, unless the metric connects to the “big picture” in a way that emphasizes the success of the whole over any one part.

I agree measuring individuals is normally not an effective way improve. And “measuring up” can often be valuable. Often a fixation on small process measures can result in improvements that don’t actually improve the end result. But rather than the measure up view, I find looking at outcome measures (to measure overall effectiveness) and process measures (for viewing specific parts of the system “big picture”) the most useful strategy.

The reason for process measures is not to improve those results alone. But those process measures can be selected to measure key processes within the system. Say finding 3 process measures that if we can improve these then this important outcome measure will improve (using PDSA to make sure your prediction is accurate - don’t fall into the trap of focusing on improving that measure even after the data shows it does not result in the desired improvement to the overall results that was predicted).

Also, process measures are helpful in serving as indicators that something is going wrong (or potentially going better than normal). Process measures will change quickly (good ones can be close to real time) thus facilitate immediate remedies and immediate examination of what lead to the problem to aid in avoiding that condition in the future.
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February 27, 2007

The Georgetown Kentucky Way

The Scott County Way by Jillian Ogawa:

It seemed only natural that Toyota’s corporate culture would influence the local schools, said Superintendent Dallas Blankenship. He estimated that one in three students in the school district have one or more parents that work for either Toyota or a Toyota supplier. The school district has had several partnership programs with Toyota in Georgetown. “Simply over time, we learned a lot of practices that have helped us to become a better school system,” he said.

Center for Quality People and Organizations:

The QUEST process consists of teaching students teamwork philosophies to learn current curriculum in all different subject areas. We provide a safe environment (parameters/ground rules) and a process for the students to conduct their groups using problem-solving techniques (PDCA: Plan Do Check Act)

Great. The Education area does require special care but management improvement concepts can work very well in education. David Langford has done some great work in this area as has Alfie Kohn. They are not focused on the Toyota Way but their principles and lean thinking go together well and there expertise in the education area is very important.

via: Scott County Schools Trying Out the Toyota Way

Related: K-12 (kindergarten though high school) improvement resources - articles on quality education - posts on Toyota management methods - quality learning books

February 23, 2007

Talking with Toyota’s CEO

Talking with Toyota’s Top Man

But there’s still more work to be done?
The scariest symptom of “big-company disease” is that complacency will breed in the company. To be satisfied with becoming the top runner, and to become arrogant, is the path we must be most fearful of. There are so many challenges and issues that we need to address. Each individual [needs] to have the mentality to challenge those problems. Problems must be made visible. Not just in Japan but in all affiliated activities around the world.

That’s a very good point and a key element of my own management: how we make sure our own DNA is transferred to the younger generation at Toyota. So long as certain things are achieved, this will be ensured. Going and seeing for oneself is the key. It’s very easy to understand. When there’s a problem, one should drill down and [see] what’s taking place and why a certain problem has occurred. [The key thing is to] teach the method of identifying a problem and implementing the resolution.

Related: New Toyota CEO’s Views - Why Toyota Is Afraid Of Being Number One - Interview with Toyota President - Could Toyota Fix GM - TPS - Take 2

Transformation and Redesign

Here is an excellent article from 1999: Transformation and Redesign at the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) (pdf link) by March Laree Jacques

This article describes an organizational transformation effort undertaken at the White House Communications Agency. It shares the Agency’s efforts through the period of 1992-1998, beginning with a Deming-based approach to continuous quality improvement through implementation of a total organizational redesign using systems thinking precepts. It describes the
obstacles to implementing quality concepts in a high visibility, high security organization and examines the influence of Agency’s organizational culture on quality performance and improvement. The discussion examines the applicability of several broadly accepted quality concepts to the “ultimate command-and-control” organization.

The article is informative and interesting, enjoy. A couple years after this article I I went to work for Gerald Suarez at the White House Military Office (WHMO). WHCA is one of seven operational units of WHMO, others include: Air Force One, Camp David and the White House Medical Unit.

See more management improvement articles including in the Curious Cat Management Improvement Library.

Related: articles and podcasts by Russel Ackoff - Deming on Management - Deming related blog posts - Public Sector Continuous Improvement Site

February 19, 2007

More Positive Press for Toyota Management

via NY Times Magazine on Toyota, a very good article: From 0 to 60 to World Domination

Certainly the most obvious example of Toyota’s long view is the Prius hybrid.

I don’t think so, that is an example of their medium term thinking. Personal Robot Aids, biotechnology, housing and environmental development - that is long term thinking. More on Non-Automotive Toyota.

And yet deconstructing Toyota means breaking down a corporation that uses all its resources, and more than 295,000 employees worldwide, to construct things that are not meant to come apart.

Exactly, they have a system of management. Related: Systemic Thinking - Excessive CEO Pay - Lean is Harmony - Purpose of an Organization - Ackoff, Idealized Design and Bell Labs

Toyota is as much a philosophy as a business, a patchwork of traditions, apothegms and precepts that don’t translate easily into the American vernacular. Some have proved incisive (”Build quality into processes”) and some opaque (”Open the window. It’s a big world out there!”). Toyota’s overarching principle, Press told me, is “to enrich society through the building of cars and trucks.”

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