Feb 18 2018
Toyota’s Way Changed the World’s Factories. Now the Retool | K. Buckland & N. Sano | Bloomberg
“The automaker last month created a single group, staffed with 200 employees, to manage the Toyota Production System, centralizing a function that was spread out through the organization. Their task is to evaluate how core concepts like kaizen, or continuous improvement, can be applied to new businesses that include car sharing and consumer robots. The person in charge is 59-year-old Shigeki Tomoyama, a career Toyota executive who wields a tablet computer during events, making him look more like a Silicon Valley software engineer than a car guy. […] Akio Toyoda says the automaker his grandfather founded eight decades ago needs to move faster to keep up with the likes of Google and Uber Technologies Inc. […] In the last two years, Toyota has opened a Silicon Valley research center”
Source: Bloomberg Technology
Michel Baudin‘s comments: The article includes a group photo of the original Gazoo group from 1997 that includes both Tomoyama and current Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda:
Gazoo is an internet portal created by Toyota that is in sharp contrast with the brochureware websites of other automakers, featuring, among other things, articles about classic cars, used cars, road trips in Japan, and entertainment devices for kids during drives. This article is the first reference to Gazoo that I have seen in the American press. It’s unfortunate because Gazoo has been online since 2000 and is an approach to car marketing that deserves attention.
May 31 2018
Stability Before Innovation | James Womack | The Lean Post
“Are we in the Lean Community lacking imagination and creativity? Indeed, do we take away the time and space for creativity and imagination from employees with our focus on standardizing work and our relentless process analysis […]? Or maybe this is backwards. Is it possible that […] a stable organization with stable processes enables successful innovation? […] Contrast Toyota’s methods with those of other companies generally believed to have brilliant, innovative ideas but no robust development, production, supplier management or even customer support processes, and which are short of funds. Not just Tesla but the whole VC-backed auto start-up industry come to mind.”
Sourced from The Lean Post
Michel Baudin‘s comments:
I don’t understand why Jim Womack restricts the discussion of stability and innovation to the car industry and the comparison with other companies to “VC-backed auto start-ups” that are short of funds. Toyota’s leaders grew the company by doing what they had to do to navigate the Japanese car industry. It is, in retrospect, a spectacularly successful model and worth studying. It is not, however, universally relevant.
Here in the heart of Silicon Valley, we view it as the worldwide hub of innovation, not the Nagoya area. Local entrepreneurs, VC-backed or not, have given us multiple generations of companies that are not exactly short of cash, like Hewlett Packard, Intel, Apple, eBay, Netflix, Google, Facebook,… Some of them are dabbling in the auto industry but most of their revenues come from elsewhere. It doesn’t make their practices and business models any less worthy of study than Toyota’s.
#innovation, #toyota, #siliconvalley
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By Michel Baudin • Blog clippings, Uncategorized • 5 • Tags: innovation, Silicon Valley, Toyota