Acknowledgments

This book is the product of 20 years of study of Toyota. Much of that work was done under the auspices of the Japan Technology Management Program at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where I am currently Director. This program was started in 1991 with generous funding through the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), but it really began with the vision of Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico. Senator Bingaman worked behind the scenes to get the funding to support university programs like mine to learn from Japan, send technically oriented students to Japan on internships, and share what we learned with others in the United States. At that time in the late '80s and early '90s, the "learning trade imbalance" was huge—with most of the learning going from the U.S. to Japan and little coming back. There were many reasons for this, but one was that the U.S. did not want to listen. The phenomenal success of companies like Toyota woke us up, and Toyota has contributed greatly to bringing more balance into the exchange of learning.

Toyota has been remarkably open in sharing its source of competitive advantage with the rest of the world. A milestone was Eiji Toyoda's decision in 1982 when, as chairman, he, along with Shoichiro Toyoda, President, approved the agreement with GM to create NUMMI, a joint auto manufacturing venture specifically intended to teach the "Toyota Way" to GM. That meant sharing Toyota's crown jewel, the famous Toyota Production System, with its principal global competitor. Another milestone in opening up TPS to the world was the decision to create the Toyota Supplier Support Center in 1992 for the purpose of teaching the Toyota Production System to U.S. companies by setting up working models in plants across industries. I personally benefited from this remarkable openness.

Unfortunately, I cannot acknowledge all of the individuals at Toyota who graciously agreed to lengthy interviews and reviewed parts of this book for accuracy. But several were particularly influential in my learning about the Toyota Way. These included (job titles are from the time of the interviews):

• Bruce Brownlee, General Manager, Corporate Planning and External Affairs of the Toyota Technical Center—my key liaison for the book.

• Jim Olson, Senior Vice President, Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America—carefully considered the Toyota Way book and then supported Toyota's full participation to get it right.

• Jim Wiseman, Vice President, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, North America—opened the doors to the Toyota Production System in manfacturing.

• Irv Miller, Group Vice President, Toyota Motor Sales—opened the door to the world of sales and distribution at Toyota.

• Fujio Cho, President of Toyota Motor Company—shared his passion for the Toyota Way.

• Gary Convis, President of Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky and Managing Officer of Toyota—helped me understand the process of an American learning the depths of the Toyota Way.

• Toshiaki (Tag) Taguchi, President and CEO of Toyota Motor North America—provided insights into the Toyota Way in Sales.

• Jim Press, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Toyota Motor Sales, USA—gave me deep insights into the philosophy of the Toyota Way.

• Al Cabito, Group Vice President, Sales Administration, Toyota Motor Sales, USA—provided great insights into Toyota's emerging build-to-order strategy.

• Tadashi (George) Yamashina, President, Toyota Technical Center, USA—introduced me to hourensou and a deeper appreciation of genchi genbutsu.

• Kunihiko (Mike) Masaki, former President, Toyota Technical Center—took every opportunity to get me in the door at Toyota to study the Toyota Way.

• Dave Baxter, Vice President, Toyota Technical Center—shared more hours than I had a right to ask for explaining Toyota's product development system and its underlying philosophy.

• Ed Mantey, Vice President, Toyota Technical Center—Ed is a real engineer who is living proof Toyota can train American engineers who deeply understand the Toyota Way.

• Dennis Cuneo, Senior Vice President, Toyota Motor North America—drew on his wealth of experience at NUMMI and beyond and helped me understand Toyota's commitment to social responsibility.

• Dick Mallery, Partner, Snell and Wilmer—passionately described how as a lawyer for Toyota he has been transformed by the Toyota Way.

• Don Jackson, Vice President, Manufacturing, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky—explained and demonstrated what it means to respect and involve workers on the shop floor.

• Glenn Uminger, Assistant General Manager, Business Management & Logistics Production Control, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, North America, Inc—explained how an accountant at Toyota could develop a TPS support office and then lead logistics for North America—having fun at every step.

• Teruyuki Minoura, former President, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, North America—chilled me with real life stories of learning TPS at the feet of the master Taiichi Ohno.

• Steve Hesselbrock, Vice President Operations, Trim Masters—shared generously of his years of learning to be one of the best Toyota seat suppliers in the world through trial by fire.

• Kiyoshi Imaizumi, President Trim Masters—gave me the real story on what it took to be a Toyota supplier in Japan.

• Ichiro Suzuki, former Chief Engineer, Lexus and Executive Advisory Engineer—showed me what a real super engineer can be.

• Takeshi Uchiyamada, Senior Managing Director and former Chief Engineer, Prius—taught me what it means to lead a revolutionary project (Prius) by working through people.

• Jane Beseda, GM and VP North American Parts Operations—articulated for me the Toyota Way view of information technology and automation in a way that made the light bulbs come on.

• Ken Elliott, Service Parts Center National Manager—shared his story of building the Toyota Way culture in a new parts distribution center.

• Andy Lund, Program Manager, Sienna, Toyota Technical Center—shared insights into the translation of Toyota's culture in Japan into U.S. operations from the perspective of an American who grew up in Japan.

• Jim Griffith, Vice President, Toyota Technical Center—always with humor corrected misconceptions and challenged my understanding of the Toyota Way.

• Chuck Gulash, Vice President, Toyota Technical Center—on a test-track drive taught me "attention to detail" in vehicle evaluation.

• Ray Tanguay, President, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Canada—taught me that technological innovation and TPS can go hand in hand.

I owe a special debt to John Shook, the former Toyota manager who helped start up NUMMI, the Toyota Technical Center, and the Toyota Supplier Support Center. John has dedicated his career to understanding the Toyota Way. He brought this passion to the University of Michigan where he joined us for several years as Director of our Japan Technology Management Program and continues to be a leader in the Lean community. John was my mentor on TPS, teaching me first the basics and then, as I developed my understanding, the ever more sophisticated lessons in the philosophy of the Toyota Way.

Most of this book was written in 2003 when I was privileged to spend a very cold East Coast winter in sunny and warm Phoenix visiting my former student and now Professor Tom Choi of Arizona State University. With a nice, private office without windows in the mornings and afternoons of golf, it was the perfect climate for writing. The four-month adventure with my loving wife Deborah and my children Jesse and Emma is a once-in-a-lifetime memory.

This book looks beyond Toyota's Production System across the company, including parts logistics and supply chain management. My understanding of "lean logistics" has been greatly enhanced by research funded by the Sloan Foundation's Trucking Industry Program, led by my close friend and colleague Chelsea (Chip) White at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Finally, I had a lot of editing and writing help. When informed by my publisher that my book was twice as long as allowable, in a panic I called my former developmental editor, Gary Peurasaari, to bail me out. He worked his magic on every page in this book, reorganizing content where necessary, but more importantly, and in the true Toyota Way fashion, he eliminated wasted words, bringing value-added words to life. He was more of a partner in writing than an editor. Then Richard Narramore, the editor at McGraw-Hill who asked me to write the book, lead me through a second major rewrite bringing the book to a new level. It is a testimony to the Toyota Way that these two individuals got so engrossed in the book they spent night and day painstakingly helping to craft the right words to describe this precious philosophy of management.