Page 207 - How To Implement Lean Manufacturing

Cultur es 185

The Toyota Production System and Its Culture
After having studied the culture of Toyota, and having worked with many Toyota facil-
ities and suppliers, I have come to not only appreciate but quite frankly admire the
Toyota culture. It is the healthiest culture of any business I have ever studied. It is a
culture that is both strong and appropriate for their business.

An Appropriate Culture
Their culture is absolutely appropriate for their business. First, while using their culture
as a strong tool to improve their business, they have grown from a small manufacturing
firm making a few thousand small trucks per year to a manufacturing giant. Second,
Toyota has not only grown, their production system has been copied all over the world
in every type of manufacturing environment. Finally, they have used their culture as a
strong weapon in the battle for survival and prosperity. In today’s environment, while
Chrysler and General Motors are struggling to survive, Toyota continues to prosper. All
of this is largely due to the culture within Toyota.

A Healthy Culture
The culture is healthy when the beliefs, thoughts, and actions are consistent through-
out the business. These attributes are vertically integrated as well as laterally inte-
grated throughout the entire Toyota business, suppliers included. They are so consistent
it is almost boring. Furthermore, it is such a strong culture that it has developed a lan-
guage of its own with new words like “kanban” and “autonomation,” and old words
like “leveling” that have an entirely new meaning.

A Culture of Management Responsibility
A facet of Toyota that has always stood out to me was their unrelenting respect for
people. Even more so is their thorough acceptance of responsibility. Especially the
responsibilities of management. Think about their policy of no layoffs. This has been
their policy since before the days of Kiichiro Toyoda, who resigned as President in dis-
grace in 1948. His responsibility was manifest when he resigned because forced layoffs
were required to avoid bankruptcy—all to save the company. Toyota has maintained
this policy of no layoffs, even until today. It is clearly a part of their culture. A part that
is neither well understood nor appreciated by Western managers.
Today, a few companies have agreements like this with employees. These compa-
nies are not the norm, but some do exist. However, I can provide no examples where,
when the company suffered financially, the President stood up, took responsibility for
the problems, and resigned. Quite the opposite is the norm. The stories are legion of
those CEOs whose companies failed but they dropped out to safe landings with their
golden parachutes. But back to Mr. Toyoda for a second. Can you imagine what impact
it has—on the culture, on the entire organization, and on the managers and workers
alike—to know that this level of responsibility is not only expected of all, but is also
practiced by the highest echelon of management? Well, it is huge, to say the least.
What Toyota is saying through their actions is what any responsible company
would say, that is: “If the company fails, it is because management has failed.” Across
the business world, unfortunately, what is seen differs greatly from what Toyota says.
Rather, almost without exception, management will take credit for the successes, but