I’ve completed part one of three, chapters 1-6 of “The Toyota Way”. I haven’t made as much progress as I’d like, but that’s because reading on the PC is somewhat restrictive and anyway, people keep asking me do DO things… What sort of job is this?
So far I’ve enjoyed the text; informative and well written, it’s an easy read. The book is about how Toyota have developed tenants and principles that can be applied to production and services processes to reduce waste and increase quality and efficiency, whilst treating all those involved with care and responsibility. This all sounds great, but carries more weight when you start to understand how Toyota have applied this and how they have performed as a result.
Part one gives a brief history of the Toyota company and focuses on how the Toyota production system developed over time. Focus* is given to the development and production of the Prius and the Lexus and how the Toyota Way allowed these ground breaking to perform so well.
I have some experience of Scrum and can see parallels between this and the Toyota production system in the use of cross functional teams and focus on value. I’m looking forward to the rest of the book though I’m expecting to have even less time to devote of the next week or so, since I’m providing some internal training.
*no pun intended
