Page 15 - Toyota Under Fire

PREF ACE

productivity data spoke for themselves. When I first told Ameri-
can manufacturing executives about Toyota’s benchmarks, they
told me that those numbers were impossible.
Most important, what I saw when I visited Toyota wasn’t
some new management initiative or a one-month quality and
teamwork campaign. Toyota’s approach to leadership and opera-
tional excellence was based on a philosophy and culture, now
known as the Toyota Way, that extended back to the company’s
founding as a maker of automatic looms before the turn of the
twentieth century. While almost everything about the company
had changed at the surface level during that time, the commit-
ment to the culture and philosophy of continuous improvement,
respect for people, contributing to society, and putting custom-
ers first hadn’t changed at all. My cold-hearted skepticism slowly
turned to warm-hearted enthusiasm.
Since then, I’ve dedicated my career to understanding the
Toyota Way as best I can and helping other companies and their
leaders to learn what they can from Toyota’s management system
and philosophy. I’ve spent tens of thousands of hours watching
and learning at Toyota and helping other companies apply Toy-
ota principles—and I have witnessed dramatic improvement in
those other companies when they did so.
In all that time, I had never had reason to doubt the sincerity
of Toyota’s commitment to quality, safety, and putting customers
first. But suddenly the press reports were painting a picture of a
company that looked nothing like the one I knew.
My first instinct was to write a storm of letters to the edi-
tor and opinion columns defending Toyota. I was stunned to see
colleagues who made a living teaching Toyota principles quoted
in the press as saying that Toyota had lost its way and had put
growth and profitability ahead of people and safety. I wanted to

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