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Decoding the Dna of the Toyota Production System

In: Business and Management

Submitted By kimymai
Words 7627
Pages 31
96

ARTWORK BY AMY NINC

The Toyota story has been intensively researched and painstakingly documented, yet what really happens inside the company remains a mystery. Here's new insight into the unspoken rules that give Toyota its competitive edge.

Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System by Steven Spear and H. Kent Bowen

long been hailed as the source of Toyota's outstanding performance as a manufacturer. The system's distinctive practices -its kanhan cards and quahty circles, for instance - have been widely introduced elsewhere. Indeed, following their own internal efforts to henchmark the world's best manufacturing companies, GM, Ford, and Chrysler have independently created major initiatives to develop Toyota-like production systems. Companies that have tried to adopt the system can be found in fields as diverse as aerospace, consumer products, metals processing, and industrial products. What's curious is that few manufacturers have managed to imitate Toyota successfully-even though the company has been extraordinarily open about its practices. Hundreds of thousands of executives from thousands of businesses have toured Toyota's plants in Japan and the United States. Frustrated by their inability to replicate Toyota's performance, many visitors assume that the secret of Toyota's success must lie in its cultural roots. But that's just not the case. Other Japanese companies, such as Nissan and Honda, have fallen short of Toyota's standards, and Toyota has successfully introduced its production system all around the world, including in North America, where the company is this year building over a million cars, minivans, and light trucks. So why has it been so difficult to decode the Toyota Production System? The answer, we believe, is that observers confuse the tools and practices they see on their plant visits with the system itself. That makes

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