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.
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The Toyota Production System has long been hailed as the source of Toyota’s outstanding performance as a manufacturer. The system’s distinctive practices—its kanban cards and quality circles, for instance—have been widely introduced elsewhere. Indeed, following their own internal efforts to benchmark 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.
Steven Spear is a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. H. Kent Bowen is the Bruce Rauner Professor of Business Administration, also at Harvard Business School. Professor Bowen is the coauthor of “Regaining the Lead in Manufacturing” (HBR September–October 1994).RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
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