The Toyota Way, a production method that empowers each worker for quality control, also encourages employees to be innovative and independent.
The Toyota Way, a production method that empowers each worker for quality control, also encourages each employee to be innovative and independent.
But, ironically, the Japanese automaker would never consider outsourcing a quality-sensitive operation like a body shop or paint shop, says Jeffrey Liker, a University of Michigan engineering professor and author of The Toyota Way.
The examples, she noted, are endless: the enormous productivity gains engineered by Toyota, the way Infosys redefined what was possible in India, the lives saved by what is now a swear word, Big Pharma.
You have to hand it to Toyota for the way it has handled the contradictory realities that make reputation management so challenging.
The small hatchback that Mercedes-Benz has on a pedestal at its auto-show display looks like a car that got lost on its way to the Toyota stand.
Toyota and Honda led the way: their American sales soared by 42% and 31% respectively.
Toyota wants to build vehicles more the way Nike assembles its shoes--with the soles made in one country, cloth uppers cut in a nearby country, all stitched together in a third country.
Despite crawling its way back to the top, Toyota still faces major challenges, such as intense competition not only from U.S. automakers but leaner rivals like Hyundai of South Korea and Volkswagen of Germany.
The market is "paying close attention to how much a weakening yen might have helped companies like Toyota as the earnings reporting season gets under way for the just-concluded fiscal period, " said Naoki Fujiwara, fund manager at Shinkin Asset Management.
The Englishman was himself some way ahead of the Williams of Kazuki Nakajima, with Jarno Trulli's Toyota taking the final points position.
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During his four years at Toyota's helm, Toyoda has learned the hard way the costs of blindly pursuing growth, a strategy inherited from his predecessor that he ruefully acknowledges got him slammed by a cascade of recalls.
Prius sales led the way for what proved to be a stellar March for Toyota and Lexus hybrid sales.
Incidentally, Smith won his way onto the fast track at GM by working with Toyota Motor Co. to establish a joint factory in California, and also by running GM Europe.
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Anyway we need to something about it and I have been advocating to utilize the Toyota Manufacturing System to reduce waste from the site selection all the way to installation to the grid.
Toyota figured out earlier this year a better way to marry the fan site with its more traditional media.
In fighting its way back, Toyota has catered to a decided shift in the drivers of reputation that have the most influence.
"Toyota is a car company that challenges itself in a way that makes the world shudder, " says Maryann Keller, a U.S.-based consultant and author of two books on the auto industry.
But Toyota, like other Japanese car companies, was looking for a way to build vehicles in the United States.
Until now, battery power has been seen as primarily a way to reduce emissions and improve fuel economy, whether with relatively conventional hybrids, like the Toyota Prius, with plug-ins, such as the new Chevrolet Volt, or with pure battery-electric vehicles, like the Nissan Leaf.
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