In Team Toyota Besser presents the results of an in-depth study of Toyota's assembly plant in Georgetown, Kentucky. Based on employee interviews, analyses of company publications, newspaper accounts, interaction with company employees and attendance at company events over a five-year period, this book documents how Toyota is replicating its style of management and its team culture in its Kentucky plant. Team Toyota is one of the few books about Japanese organizations that incorporates the perspectives of both nonmanagement and management employees. The author, using "team" as an organizing metaphor, shows how Toyota is able to penetrate the small work group to increase employee commitment and recruit support for organizational goal achievement. The team metaphor shows how Toyota coordinates the myriad of departments, occupational categories and managerial levels into a "community of fate" (we're all in this together) ideology. Further, the team concept is used to elaborate an important and problematic component of workers' reality at the Camry plant--workplace disabilities. An overview of the position of female employees and wives of Japanese executives at Toyota's Kentucky plant is also provided.
For 30 years some of the most talented and bravest drivers have battled across the continents of the world to claim what is arguably motorsport's toughest prize: the World Rally Championship. Now a multi-million dollar, global technology battle and terrestrial television phenomenon played out over the frozen wastes of Finland, the dusty plains of Australia and the sun-kissed mountain roads of Corsica, the WRC has reached its 30th birthday. This book celebrates that important milestone and paints an exhaustively detailed picture of the people and personalities who have shaped this great sport. The Complete Book of the World Rally Champions provides a biographical account of the 65 men who have won at least one World Championship Rally since 1973. The biographies are compiled by the sport's leading writers and historians and complemented by stunning photography. The book includes a detailed and accurate statistical career record of each driver, plus highlights of all the significant cars.
Written by actual Toyota team members, One Team on All Levels: Stories from Toyota Team Members, Second Edition is not another technical explanation of the Toyota Production System (TPS). Rather, it illustrates the culture it creates. The stories, told by employees from various levels of the organization, illustrate how Toyota‘s presence in Kentuck
Extreme Toyota offers the first real, comprehensive inside look at what makes one of the world?s best companies run. With unprecedented access to the inner working of Toyota, the authors spent six years researching the company, interviewing hundreds of executives and employees, and discovering the company's secret of success. What they uncovered will surprise you and change the way you think about business. Simultaneously rigidly traditional and seriously innovative, it is precisely those internal contradictions that make the company so successful and admired.
"Toyota Kata gets to the essence of how Toyota manages continuous improvement and human ingenuity, through its improvement kata and coaching kata. Mike Rother explains why typical companies fail to understand the core of lean and make limited progress—and what it takes to make it a real part of your culture." —Jeffrey K. Liker, bestselling author of The Toyota Way "[Toyota Kata is] one of the stepping stones that will usher in a new era of management thinking." —The Systems Thinker "How any organization in any industry can progress from old-fashioned management by results to a strikingly different and better way." —James P. Womack, Chairman and Founder, Lean Enterprise Institute "Practicing the improvement kata is perhaps the best way we've found so far for actualizing PDCA in an organization." —John Shook, Chairman and CEO, Lean Enterprise Institute This game-changing book puts you behind the curtain at Toyota, providing new insight into the legendary automaker's management practices and offering practical guidance for leading and developing people in a way that makes the best use of their brainpower. Drawing on six years of research into Toyota's employee-management routines, Toyota Kata examines and elucidates, for the first time, the company's organizational routines--called kata--that power its success with continuous improvement and adaptation. The book also reaches beyond Toyota to explain issues of human behavior in organizations and provide specific answers to questions such as: How can we make improvement and adaptation part of everyday work throughout the organization? How can we develop and utilize the capability of everyone in the organization to repeatedly work toward and achieve new levels of performance? How can we give an organization the power to handle dynamic, unpredictable situations and keep satisfying customers? Mike Rother explains how to improve our prevailing management approach through the use of two kata: Improvement Kata--a repeating routine of establishing challenging target conditions, working step-by-step through obstacles, and always learning from the problems we encounter; and Coaching Kata: a pattern of teaching the improvement kata to employees at every level to ensure it motivates their ways of thinking and acting. With clear detail, an abundance of practical examples, and a cohesive explanation from start to finish, Toyota Kata gives executives and managers at any level actionable routines of thought and behavior that produce superior results and sustained competitive advantage.
The Missing Link to Toyota-Style Success—LEAN LEADERSHIP Winner of the 2012 Shingo Research and Professional Publications Award “This great book reveals the secret ingredient to lean success: lean leadership. Not only is it a pleasure to read, but it is also deep and enlightening. This book is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in lean: it’s both an eye opener and a game changer.” —Michael Ballé, Ph.D., coauthor of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager “This will immediately be recognized as the most important book ever published to understand and guide ‘True North Lean’ and the goal of perpetual business excellence.” —Ross E. Robson, President and CEO, DnR Lean, LLC, and the original Director of The Shingo Prize “An excellent book that will shape leadership development for decades to come.” —Karen Martin, Principal, Karen Martin & Associates, and author of The Kaizen Event Planner About the Book: TOYOTA. The name signifies greatness—world-class cars and game-changing business thinking. One key to the Toyota Motor Company’s unprecedented success is its famous production system and its lesser-known product development program. These strategies consider the end user at every turn and have become the model for the global lean business movement. All too often, organizations adopting lean miss the most critical ingredient—lean leadership. Toyota makes enormous investments in carefully selecting and intensively developing leaders who fit its unique philosophy and culture. Thanks to the company’s lean leadership approach, explains Toyota Way author Jeffrey Liker and former Toyota executive Gary Convis, the celebrated carmaker has set into motion a drive for continuous improvement at all levels of its business. This has allowed for: Constant growth: Toyota increased profitability for 58 consecutive years—slowing down only in the face of 2008’s worldwide financial difficulties, the recall crisis, and the worst Japanese earthquake of the century. Unstoppable inventiveness: Toyota’s approach to innovative thinking and problem solving has resulted in top industry ratings and incredible customer satisfaction, while allowing the company to weather these three crises in rapid succession and to come out stronger. Strong branding and respect: Toyota’s reputation was instrumental in the company’s ability to withstand the recalls-driven media storm of 2010. But what looked to some to be a sinking ship is once again running under a full head of steam. Perhaps the Toyota culture had weakened, but lean leadership was the beacon that showed the way back. In fact, writes Liker, the company is “as good and perhaps a better model for lean leadership than it ever has been.” of innovation and growth. Yet, Industry Week reports that just 2 percent of companies using lean processes can likewise claim to have had long-term success. What the other 98 percent lack is unified leadership with a common method and philosophy. If you want to get lean, you have to take it to the leadership level. The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership shows you how.
Winning isn't easy. The world is becoming more and more competitive, with a greater need than ever for people to work together effectively in teams to make organizations successful. There is no better model for success in business than the world of sport, with its bottom-line performance culture and its relentless focus on creating winning teams. In Why Teams Win, renowned sports psychologist Dr. Saul L. Miller-the man who teaches elite athletes and top sports teams how to be successful-uses sport as a powerful metaphor for the world of business. Why Teams Win distills Dr. Miller's work with hundreds of high-performance teams-in the worlds of sport, business, healthcare, and the arts-into lessons to help business teams perform. Why Teams Win: Identified the 9 key characteristics of successful teams. Describes how to improve personal, organizational, and team performance in each of these 9 areas. Explains how and why to apply different strategies to different types of teams. Outlines how to balance the needs of the individual with the needs of the team. Helps people work together and perform to the best of their abilities. Shows how to get the maximum potential out of a group of individuals. Features advice, quotes, and interviews from high-profile athletes and coaches, as well as from business leaders. Includes self-evaluation and team-building exercises. Why Teams Win offers anyone wanting to improve their personal and team performance a proven and accessible formula for success.
High Performing Teams is the essential handbook for managers seeking to enhance productivity and revitalize the workplace. It shows how to put teams together and accelerate their development so that they become high performing more quickly and thus repay the investment in setting them up. The book touches on the extensive theoretical background of teaming and focuses on pragmatic advice and experience. It is: *rich in case studies and applications *full of quick and easy checklists *and contains executive summaries. Michael Colenso is a freelance consultant and an Associate of Wilson Learning and of the Europe Japan Centre. The ...in brief books provide a critical 'snapshot' of the major management fashions and fads influencing business strategy. They cut through the consultants' jargon and steer a practical, common sense course through the theory and hype. They provide managers with a balanced view based on evidence rather than missionary zeal, so that they can be better informed.
This book is designed for a one-semester or two-semester course in international economics, primarily targeting non-economics majors and programs in business, international relations, public policy and development studies. It has been written to make international economics accessible to wide student and professional audiences. The book assumes a minimal background in microeconomics and mathematics and goes beyond the usual trade-finance dichotomy to give equal treatment to four 'windows' on the world economy: international trade, international production, international finance and international development. It takes a practitioner point of view rather than a standard academic view, introducing the student to the material they need to become effective analysts in international economic policy. The website for the text is found at http://iie.gmu.edu/.
This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the changes that have taken place in the systems and practices of Japanese management over the last quarter century, identifies the positive and useful attributes that ought to be maintained, and clarifies the behavioral principles that form the groundwork of their strengths. Observing the changes in the business environment brought about by the forces of intensifying globalization, the book presents a highly effective management model that builds on the superior aspects of Japanese-style management while overcoming its weaknesses. It is a multi-layered human-resources management model that combines the mutually complementary aspects of the Japanese and Anglo-Saxon systems, incorporating the strengths of both systems. This hybrid model is aimed at increasing workplace motivation, promoting the creation of new value, and enhancing performance and can be used successfully in many countries around the world. It will be of interest to business strategists and consultants, scholars, and entrepreneurs.
