Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results

Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results
Author: Mike Rother
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2009-09-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0071639853

"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.

Toyota Kata

Toyota Kata
Author: Rother
Publisher: Tata McGraw-Hill Education
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009-12
Genre: Personnel management
ISBN: 9780070683464

A leading expert on Toyota provides the very first look at the company's people-management routines Based on six years of research, Toyota Kata brings to light, for the first time, the auto company s secrets to managing employees. It reveals the two main routines of thinking and acting (called kata) that Toyota instills in its people, which in turn generate continuous improvement, adaptation, and remarkable results.Inside, Mike Rother provides the insights readers need to model their management system after that of Toyota. Anyone seeking better ways to lead, manage, and develop people will find all they need in Toyota Kata.

Toyota Kata Culture: Building Organizational Capability and Mindset through Kata Coaching

Toyota Kata Culture: Building Organizational Capability and Mindset through Kata Coaching
Author: Mike Rother
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2017-05-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1259860450

Take advantage of your organization’s brainpower with Kata-driven continuous improvement “This is the first book I have read that provides a clear picture of what it takes to develop and mobilize creative capability across an organization, to achieve challenging goals.” Jeffrey K. Liker, author of The Toyota Way (from the Foreword) Nobody drives continuous improvement in real, tangible ways like Toyota, where everyone at every level works toward common, customer-related goals. At Toyota, continuous improvement is habitual. In his groundbreaking book Toyota Kata, Mike Rother revealed management practices that drive Toyota’s success in providing value to their customers. Now, Rother and coauthor Gerd Aulinger provide the routines and know-how for scaling these practices across your entire organization. It all builds on five simple foundational questions at every level: What is the target condition? What is the actual condition? What obstacles stand in the way of the target condition? What is the next step? What have you learned from taking that step? Illustrated cover to cover, Toyota Kata Culture helps you visualize exactly how these methods work—so you can start putting them into action right away. You’ll learn how to develop your own iterative process of trial and adjustment, build a deliberate, scientific-thinking culture that grows capability, and make aligned strategic continuous improvement part of everyday work. Achieve your goals and differentiate your organization by following the proven formula laid out in Toyota Kata Culture.

The Toyota Kata Practice Guide: Practicing Scientific Thinking Skills for Superior Results in 20 Minutes a Day

The Toyota Kata Practice Guide: Practicing Scientific Thinking Skills for Superior Results in 20 Minutes a Day
Author: Mike Rother
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2017-10-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1259861031

Take the Kata path to scientific thinking and superior results! In this long-awaited companion to the groundbreaking book Toyota Kata, Mike Rother takes you to the next level of developing business mindset and capability for the 21st Century. Much more than a list of management concepts, The Toyota Kata Practice Guide walks you through the process of making improvement, adaptation, and even innovation routine behavior. Designed to help a coach (the manager) and a learner work together for developing new skillsets, The Toyota Kata Practice Guide delivers the information, insight, and frameworks you need to: • Form habits that help you solve problems and achieve challenging goals • Modify the thought patterns that drive your behavior • Develop an organizational mindset that drives superior results The Improvement Kata gives learners the means to experiment their way through obstacles and achieve tough goals; the Coaching Kata gives managers the means to accelerate and cement their people's learning. In the new age of business, increasing efficiency and decreasing costs is no longer the end game. A manager’s job today is to develop patterns of thinking and acting in their people that lead to success with any challenge. Consistent, mindful practice is the best way to do it—and The Toyota Kata Practice Guide is the best way to get there.

Lean Thinking

Lean Thinking
Author: James P. Womack
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2013-09-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1471111008

Lean Thinking was launched in the fall of 1996, just in time for the recession of 1997. It told the story of how American, European, and Japanese firms applied a simple set of principles called 'lean thinking' to survive the recession of 1991 and grow steadily in sales and profits through 1996. Even though the recession of 1997 never happened, companies were starving for information on how to make themselves leaner and more efficient. Now we are dealing with the recession of 2001 and the financial meltdown of 2002. So what happened to the exemplar firms profiled in Lean Thinking? In the new fully revised edition of this bestselling book those pioneering lean thinkers are brought up to date. Authors James Womack and Daniel Jones offer new guidelines for lean thinking firms and bring their groundbreaking practices to a brand new generation of companies that are looking to stay one step ahead of the competition.

Managing to Learn

Managing to Learn
Author: John Shook
Publisher: Lean Enterprise Institute
Total Pages: 154
Release: 2008
Genre: Decision making
ISBN: 1934109207

"The process by which a company identifies, frames, acts and reviews progress on problems, projects and proposals can be found in the structure of the A3 process ... follow the story of a manager ... and his report ... which will reveal how the A3 can be used as a management process to create a standard method for innovating, planning, problem-solving, and building structures for a broader and deeper form of thinking - a practical and repeatable approach to organizational learning"--Publisher's description.

The Machine That Changed the World

The Machine That Changed the World
Author: James P. Womack
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 501
Release: 2008-12-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1847375960

When James Womack, Daniel Jones, and Daniel Roos wrote THE MACHINE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD in 1990, Japanese automakers, and Toyota in particular, were making a strong showing by applying the principles of lean production. However, the full power of lean principles was unproven, and they had not been applied outside of the auto industry. Today, the power of lean production has been conclusively proved by Toyota's unparalleled success, and the concepts have been widely applied in many industries. Based on MIT's pioneering global study of industrial competition, THE MACHINE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD offers a groundbreaking analysis of the entire lean business system, including product development, supplier management, sales, service, and production - an analysis even more relevant today as GM and Ford struggle to survive and a wide range of British abd American companies embrace lean production. A new Foreword by the authors brings the story up to date and details how their predictions were right. As a result, this reissue of a classic is as insightful and instructive today as when it was first published.

A Factory of One

A Factory of One
Author: Daniel Markovitz
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2011-12-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1439859930

Most business readers have heard of the Lean principles developed for factories—a set of tools and ideas that have enabled companies to dramatically boost quality by reducing waste and errors—producing more while using less. Yet until now, few have recognized how relevant these powerful ideas are to individuals and their daily work. Every person at a desk, drafting table, workstation, or operating table must (like a factory) deal with the challenge of reducing the waste that creeps into their work. The same Lean principles that have improved efficiencies on the factory floor can be just as powerful—in fact, far more so—in helping individuals boost personal performance. Winner of a 2013 Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award! A Factory of One: Applying Lean Principles to Banish Waste and Improve Your Personal Performance describes how you can foster a new mindset and improve your performance by applying Lean methods to your work. It translates powerful Lean tools such as visual management, flow, pull, 5S, and kaizen to your daily work, revealing how they can help to improve efficiency, reduce waste, and link you ever more closely to customer value. This practice will help you develop better self-awareness, more disciplined problem-solving skills, and the ability to self-correct errors. This book not only provides the tools, but also teaches you how to find the root causes underlying your inefficiencies so you can eliminate them permanently. It will enable you to immediately improve personal productivity while developing the skills needed for continuous improvement. It includes real-world examples that illustrate how these principles have been successfully applied across a range of industries. Providing the perfect mix of what-to-do with why-to-do it, the text details a step-by-step approach to applying Lean principles to your work. Listen to what Daniel Markovitz has to say about his new book, A Factory of One. Part One — Part Two View the book's website at www.afactoryofone.com. View the author’s website at www.timebackmanagement.com.

The Toyota Way Fieldbook

The Toyota Way Fieldbook
Author: Jeffrey K. Liker
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2005-10-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0071502114

The Toyota Way Fieldbook is a companion to the international bestseller The Toyota Way. The Toyota Way Fieldbook builds on the philosophical aspects of Toyota's operating systems by detailing the concepts and providing practical examples for application that leaders need to bring Toyota's success-proven practices to life in any organization. The Toyota Way Fieldbook will help other companies learn from Toyota and develop systems that fit their unique cultures. The book begins with a review of the principles of the Toyota Way through the 4Ps model-Philosophy, Processes, People and Partners, and Problem Solving. Readers looking to learn from Toyota's lean systems will be provided with the inside knowledge they need to Define the companies purpose and develop a long-term philosophy Create value streams with connected flow, standardized work, and level production Build a culture to stop and fix problems Develop leaders who promote and support the system Find and develop exceptional people and partners Learn the meaning of true root cause problem solving Lead the change process and transform the total enterprise The depth of detail provided draws on the authors combined experience of coaching and supporting companies in lean transformation. Toyota experts at the Georgetown, Kentucky plant, formally trained David Meier in TPS. Combined with Jeff Liker's extensive study of Toyota and his insightful knowledge the authors have developed unique models and ideas to explain the true philosophies and principles of the Toyota Production System.

Welcome Problems, Find Success

Welcome Problems, Find Success
Author: Kiyoshi "Nate" Furuta
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 141
Release: 2021-09-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000449351

In this book, author Nate Furuta, former chair and CEO of Toyota Boshoku America Inc., shares the story of his decades of experience directly leading the establishment of Toyota cultures outside Japan. Furuta was the first Toyota employee on the ground at New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI), Toyota’s joint venture in California with General Motors, where he directly led the establishment of the most revolutionary labor-management agreement in the history of the US auto industry. In addition, Furuta was the first Toyota employee on the ground in Georgetown Kentucky at Toyota’s first full-scale, wholly owned manufacturing operation outside Japan, where he led (working directly with President Fujio Cho) the establishment of Toyota’s general management systems and culture there. This book tells the stories of establishing successful operations in those two iconic organizations as well as others. Furuta reveals details, both stories and process descriptions that only he can tell. He takes you along as he and others lead Toyota’s intense globalization from the early 1980s to recent days. He introduces you to the critical leaders in Toyota's history, such as Taiichi Ohno and Fujio Cho as well as Kenzo Tamai, the head of the company’s HRM function in the 1980s. This book is not about human-resource management (HRM) policies and procedures. It provides a deep dive into the way senior leaders embody deep awareness of HRM matters, developing and executing company strategy while at the same time developing organizational capability. The role of senior leaders isn’t just a matter of directing the company to achieve objectives; it is a matter of building the capability to achieve those objectives, consistently, and further developing capability as it executes. Key to this is to develop the awareness, attitude, capability, and practice of identifying problems as progress is made toward achieving objectives, which is, in fact, attained through steadily eliminating each problem as it arises. This becomes a self-reinforcing loop of the organization, tapping in to the essence of solving problems while simultaneously developing ever better problem-solving skills and better problem solvers. This loop propels an organization toward meeting its purpose while developing capability for capability development. Essentially, this book reveals Toyota’s general management systems from the firsthand experience of a Toyota Japanese senior manager and describes, with stories and process examples, the attitude, behaviors, and systems needed to successfully establish and lead in a true Lean business environment.