Page 41 - The Toyota Way Fieldbook

Chapter 2. Define Your Company Purpose and Begin to Live It 19

Internal External

Learning Community Learning Enterprise

ST: Capable People ST: Capable Partners
LT: Learning to Improve LT: Learning Enterprise
People

Company

Purpose

Business
Lean Systems Value-Adding Contributor

ST: Capable Processes ST: Profitable
LT: Value Stream LT: Growth and
Improvement Contributing to Society

Key: ST=Short term LT=Long term
Figure 2-1. Defining the company purpose

Figure 2-1 represents company purpose as a matrix combining internal and
external goals as they relate to people and business. It includes simple state-
ments based on Toyota’s purpose and shows both the short-term goal and the
longer term purpose of the company.
The short-term goals for each cell are what every company wants: capable
internal processes, capable people who can do the work, capable partners who
can do their jobs, and they want to make money. That’s pretty straightforward.
More challenging is getting a sincere commitment by top management to long-
term thinking. Let’s consider what long-term thinking means in each of the four
cells.
Lean Systems

Let’s keep it simple and start with what most of the world knows best about
Toyota—the technical part of the Toyota Production System. It reduces the time
between a customer order and delivery by eliminating non-value-added waste.
The result is a lean process that delivers high quality to customers at a low cost,