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TOYOTAS KAIZEN EXPERIENCE Human beings think our way is the best, but at Toyota, we are told we have

to always change. We believe there is no perfect way, so we continue to search. The goal is to break the current condition through Kaizen. December 2000. - Shoichiro Toyoda, Chairman, Toyota Motor Corporation, in

TOYOTA REINVENTS THE NEED FOR KAIZEN In the early 1990s, the Japanese automobile major, Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota) was facing acute labor shortage. The emergence of high wage jobs and a shortage of young workers due to the low birth rates in Japan in the previous two decades were the primary reasons for this. The number of women and aged people was increasing in the countrys labor pool. These people avoided heavy manufacturing work. Toyotas strong focus on improving productivity and production efficiency over the decades had created strained work atmosphere as the workers were reportedly over burdened. This led to an exodus of young workers from the company. In 1990, around 25% of newly hired young workers left the company in their first year itself. To deal with the labor shortage problem, Toyota employed many temporary workers in the assembly plants. The ratio of temporary workers in the workforce soon reached more than 10% some work groups had around 75% temporary workers. As these temporary workers were not adequately trained, the annual working hours of the company increased, while productivity decreased (Refer Figure I).
1985-10 1.15 1.10 1.05 1.00 9.5 9.0 8.5 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992

Producti on Productivity Labor Force

FIGURE I PRODUCTION, PRODUCTIVITY AND LABOUR FORCE (1985-1992) Source: Transforming Kaizen at Toyota, Koichi Shimizu, Okayama University. Further, according to analysts, Toyota managements focus on increasing production efficiency by achieving higher production levels with less number of workers resulted in increased stress for the workers. This also played a major part in the worker exodus. Toyotas problems increased with by the global upsurge in car demand during 1987-1991 because of which the demand for labor shot up. As high wage jobs were easily available

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to the limited pool of young male workers, many Toyota workers began to leave the company. To handle the crisis, Toyota radically changed its production management and human resource management practices. The company decided to change its working conditions to attract high school female graduates and workers over forty years. Toyota realized that it would have to rely on Kaizen for modifying its existing assembly lines to attract workers. BACKGROUND NOTE Toyotas history goes back to 1897, when Sakichi Toyoda (Sakichi) diversified into the handloom machinery business from his family traditional business of carpentry. He founded Toyoda Automatic Loom Works (TALW) in 1926 for manufacturing automatic looms. Sakichi invented a loom that stopped automatically when any of the threads snapped. This concept of designing equipment to stop so that defects could be fixed immediately formed the basis of the Toyota Production System (TPS) that went on to become a major factor in the companys success. In 1933, Sakichi established an automobile department within TALW and the first passenger car prototype was developed in 1935. Sakichis son Kiichiro Toyoda (Kiichiro) convinced him to enter the automobile business. After this the production of Model AA began and Toyota Motor Corporation was established in 1937. Kiichiro visited the Ford Motor Company in Detroit to study the US automotive industry. He saw that an average US workers production was nine times that of a Japanese worker. He realized that the productivity of the Japanese automobile industry had to be increased if it were to compete globally. Back in Japan, he customized the Ford production system to suit Japanese market. He also devised a system wherein each process in the assembly line of production would produce only the number of parts needed at the next step on the production line, which made logistics management easier as material was procured according to consumption. This system was referred to as Just-in-Time (JIT) within the Toyota Group. The JIT production was defined as producing only necessary units in a necessary quantity at a necessary time resulting in decreased excess inventories and excess workforce, thereby increasing productivity. Kiichiro realized that by relying solely on the central planning approach, it would be very difficult to implement JIT in all the processes for an automobile. Hence, TPS followed the production flow conversely. People working in one process went to the preceding one to withdraw the necessary units in the necessary quantities at the necessary time. This resulted in the preceding process producing only quantities of units to replace those that had been withdrawn. Toyota flourished during the Second World War by selling trucks and buses to the army and the company launched its first small car (SA Model) in 1947. After the war, the company faced a series of financial problems. A financial support package from a consortium of banks (after the intervention of the Bank of Japan) helped Toyota tide over its problems. The package consisted of a series of steps that included downsizing and restructuring the company into separate manufacturing and sales divisions. As per the revival package, The Toyota Motor Sales Company Ltd. was formed in 1950. In the same year, Kiichiro resigned. By 1952, Toyota made a turnaround and in 1953, the company appointed distributors in El Salvador and Saudi Arabia and started exports. Meanwhile, Taiichi Ohno (Ohno) took charge of the company. In 1957, Toyota entered the US market through its subsidiary, Toyota Motor Sales, USA. In 1959, the company began its first overseas production in T.K.RAMASUBBU 2

Brazil and over the next few years, developed a vast network of overseas plants. Besides manufacturing, Toyota started a global network of design and Research and Development facilities covering the three major car markets of Japan, North America and Europe. By the early 1970s, Toyotas sales exceeded that of Chrysler and Volkswagen and its production was behind that of only General Motors (GM) and Ford. Toyota continued its efforts to make its production system more efficient and also developed flexible manufacturing systems. It also began to tap the markets in the Middle East and by 1974 the Toyota Corolla, (launched in 1965) became the largest selling car in the world. In 1984, Toyota entered into a joint venture with GM and established the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI). By the early 1990s, as Toyota expanded its overseas operations, the excessive capital spending affected its profit margins. Tatsuro Toyoda (Tatsuro), who took over as the company President in 1992, began to control costs by eliminating all unnecessary expenditure. In 1995, after Tatsuro resigned due to health reasons, Hiroshi Okuda (Okuda) became Toyota president. In 1996, Toyota consolidated its production in North American production units into the Cincinnati based Toyota Motor Manufacturing (North America). In 1999, Okuda replaced chairman Shoichiro Toyoda and Fujio Cho (Cho) became the president. In the same year, Toyota listed its shares on both the New York and London stock exchanges. By the end of 2001, the companys net income had reached $5,447 million and net revenue reached $106,030 million (Refer Exhibit I for the companys financial performance over the years). According to analysts, Toyotas success in both the local and global markets was mainly because of its state-of-the-art and well-planned operational strategies. The company had continuously focused on gaining a competitive advantage through implementation of innovative and path-breaking ideas on its production floors. TPS worked on the basic idea of maintaining a continuous flow of products in factories in order to flexibly adapt to demand changes. The most important feature of TPS was the way it linked all production activities to real dealer demand through implementation of Kanban, JIT and other quality measures that enabled Toyota to manufacture in low quantities. ABOUT KAIZEN & THE TOYOTA EXPERIENCE Under Ohnos guidance, Toyota adopted many operational practices that later became benchmarks for production practices across the global corporate world. It was one of the first companies in the world to adopt practices such as Kanban,1[1] Jidoka2[2] and JIT. However, Kaizen kept TPS, JIT, Kanban, and Jidoka working smoothly as an interlinked
1 [1]

Taiichi Ohno devised the Kanban system based on the American supermarket system to manage JIT production. It can be defined as an information system to control the production quantities in every process. In this system, the kind of units and the number of units needed are written on the Kanban card and sent to the people of the preceding process from the subsequent process.
[2]

Jidoka involves designing machines with an in-built capability to detect any faults in the product as soon as they occur and respond suitably.

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strategic operational plan. Some analysts even felt that Kaizen was the major contributor to the companys global success. The founder of the Japan-based Kaizen Institute, Masaaki Imai, defined Kaizen in his book, Kaizen The Key to Japans Competitive Success as, Kaizen means continuous improvement in the personal life, home life, social life and working life. When Kaizen is applied to the workplace it means continuous improvement for managers and workers. Thus, Kaizen involves everyone in an organization to make improvements without large capital investments. It can be seen as a culture of continuous sustained improvement focusing on eliminating waste in all systems and processes. The Kaizen strategy begins and ends with people. With Kaizen, an involved leadership guides people continuously to improve their abilities to meet high quality expectations, low cost and on-time delivery, which in turn helps the organization gain a competitive edge. The two most important elements of Kaizen are improvement/change for the better and ongoing/continuity. If either of these elements are absent, then a concept cannot be considered as Kaizen. Kaizens concept was based on the belief that a day should not pass without some kind of improvement in the company. One of the pre-requisites for the implementation of Kaizen in organizations is that the top management should improve and change the way it deals with employees. The Kaizen philosophy cannot be easily implemented in organizations where the culture to adopt to change is not present (Refer Table I for the pre-requisites for implementing Kaizen in organization). TABLE I PRE-REQUISITES FOR KAIZEN Discard conventional fixed ideas. Dont make excuses. Start by questioning current practices. Correct it right away, if you make mistake. Wisdom is brought out when faced with hardship. Seek the wisdom of ten people rather than the knowledge of one. Source: www.Kaizen-institute.com

Think of how to do it, not why it cannot be done. Dont seek perfection. Do it right away even if for only 50% of target. Dont spend money for Kaizen use your wisdom. Ask WHY? five times and seek root causes. Kaizen ideas are infinite.

Ohno was a great believer of the Kaizen philosophy and initiated it at Toyota in the early 1950s. Ohno laid great emphasis on improvement of production processes to increase efficiency and reduce waste irrespective of the fact that the tasks were small or major. About seven types of wastes were identified at the company in this context (Refer Table II). TABLE II

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SEVEN TYPES OF WASTES IDENTIFIED AT TOYOTA Overproduction ahead of demand Idle Time Unnecessary movement of materials Over-processing and products Excessive inventories Unnecessary movement of people Production of defective products Source: www.ciclink.com Kaizen activities at Toyota were largely aimed at eliminating these wastes and were practiced in a two-pronged manner. This consisted of Kaizen as implemented by the supervisory staff and engineers; and Kaizen as implemented by workers through Quality Circles3[3] and a suggestion system. The latter was followed globally with many companies in the West reaping Kaizen benefits through voluntary worker participation. But Toyota realized that its economic gains namely cost reduction and increased productivity, came because of the former. Prior to 1990, the Toyota management set a target cost for each part and sta7ndard time for their production and shop floors through Kaizen to meet the time and cost targets. Group leaders, chief leaders and engineers were responsible for implementing Kaizen in the production phase and it was called organized Kaizen. A product manager or a chief engineer along with the design engineers worked on the new product designs. The design stage started with the product manager fixing a product plan and setting target costs. The design engineers designed the parts and components of the vehicle to meet the above set target costs. After the design was finalized, the cost arrived at became the referential cost of the product. The production-engineering division then planned the final assembly line as per the budget constraints. In the production phase, for the first few months, the target costs and standard time were usually not met as the workers were not used to the new system. If the work group failed to achieve the referential cost even after three months of mass production, then the Kaizen activities were pursued to increase the workers efficiency to achieve the target costs. Even if the work group achieved both the referential cost and the standard time, Kaizen was used to reduce both further to increase productivity. To reduce the material costs involved in the production cost councils were set up. The management tried to reduce labor costs by fixing an amount to be reduced by following Kaizen activities. Though the responsibility of these Kaizen activities was with the director of the Production Division, a cost council meeting was held every month to manage results of Kaizen as well as to discuss the various measures that needed to be taken. Under Kaizen costing, costs were controlled through a division of responsibilities amongst group leaders, chief leaders and engineers. The group leaders were in charge of reducing the time taken by the workers by improving their operating process. Their main task was to establish standard work and standard time and the line stop system (stopping the assembly line when a problem was found and sorting out the same) was used.
3 [3]

Quality Circle comprises employees who meet regularly to discuss quality related work problems so that they may examine and generate solutions to those problems. Quality circles are empowered to promote and bring the quality improvements through to fruition.

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Autonomous study groups were formed to discuss these problems and the various measures to solve them. The chief leaders were engaged in reducing the standard time of their working unit by means of process improvements for reducing the workers in their unit. The reduction of workers from the production line was called Shojinka. This was an important method at Toyota for increasing production efficiency and decreasing labor costs. Try Teams were formed comprising skilled workers, whose main responsibility was to measure the time necessary for installing the parts in a car body through trying production of a new car before launch of its mass production. This try team was involved in the Kaizen activities of the assembly line in close co-operation with engineers. Another important aspect in the management of labor costs at Toyota was that it was calculated on the basis of production efficiency. Production efficiency was defined as the inverse of the ratio of the real working hours necessary to produce the products within their standard time. It was calculated as follows: (Standard Time) x (Production Volume) Production Efficiency = ---------------------------------------------------Real Working Hours of Working Group Only defect-free products were considered in the production volume and workers had to maintain the quality of products to increase production efficiency. As and when defective parts were found, suppliers were notified and their engineers were asked to verify and solve the problem. If the production line was stopped, the supervisory staff was forced to revise the standard tasks after verifying the cause of delay and Kaizen was used to improve the working process of the production line. According to production efficiency, work groups were classified into four levels A, B, C, and D. A standard time cutting rule was implemented according to which the standard time was reduced for the work groups, which were classified higher. This forced the working units to keep improving their production efficiency through Kaizen. This resulted in a Kaizenproduction efficiency- production allowance chain (Refer Figure II).

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K KAIZEN

Increase of Production P

Increase in Production Allowance A

F Fall Of Production

Reduction of Standard Time and a Workers

FIGURE II KAIZEN, PRODUCTION EFFICIENCY AND PRODUCTION ALLOWANCE Source: Transforming Kaizen at Toyota, Koichi Shimizu, Okayama University Toyota placed the responsibility for improvement in the hands of every worker. Each worker was expected to question every process and test all assumptions. Errors were viewed as learning opportunities and the top management encouraged workers to consider problems as challenges and to look harder until they found something that needed to be fixed. Apart from the Kaizen activities, voluntary practices at Toyota involved the team members through: Encouraging an active role in quality control. Utilizing employee ideas and opinions in production processes. Encouraging the practice of Kaizen in every work sphere.

In the production line, the team members treated the next person on the production line as a customer and so did not pass a defective part to that person. If any worker found a problem with a part or the automobile, the line was stopped and the problem corrected before the vehicle moved further down the production line. Quality Circles and the employee suggestion system, which rewarded employees for ideas, played an important role in the Kaizen at Toyota. It was reported that more than 90,000 employee suggestions were accepted each year and some individual team members gave more than 1,000 suggestions. At Toyota, each team member was a quality inspector and any time during the production process, whoever spotted a problem could stop production by pulling the Andon cord4[4] located next to the assembly line. Andon allowed the supervisor to locate the problem with a blinking light and a distinct musical tone. This helped in solving the problem immediately. Toyota became famous for its operational excellence as it continued to focus on improving the TPS and implementing tools such as Kaizen, Kanban and JIT over the decades, Toyota became world-renowned for its operational excellence. The two most significant benefits of these initiatives were undoubtedly enhanced quality and efficiency.
4 [4]

A tool of visual management, originating from Japanese for lamp. In andon, lights are placed on machines or on production lines to indicate operation status. Commonly color-coded green (normal operations), yellow (changeover or planned maintenance), and red (abnormal, machine down). Often combined with an audible signal such as music or an alarm.

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Also, the manufacturing methods were flexible enough to adjust to fluctuations in demand. The company also saved a substantial amount through cost savings (Refer Figure III). The company saved around 10 million yen as cost saving through quality initiatives in 1993, which increased to 107 million yen in 2001. FIGURE III COST SAVINGS THROUGH QUALITY INITIATIVES AND THE TPS

Cumulative cost savings 100 millions yen 12000

TOYOTA COST SAVINGS RESULTS

10,700 9,150 8,000 6,400 5,300 4,000 2,500 1,000 7,100

10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 93/6

94/6

95/3

96/3

97/3

98/3

99/3

00/3

01/3 (FY)

Source: www.global.toyota.com The company also won numerous quality awards throughout the world. Its vehicles were consistently rated near the top in third-party customer-satisfaction surveys across the globe. Many companies throughout the world adopted Toyotas quality, productivity, management, and employee relation standards. According to a census of manufacturers conducted by IndustryWeek, many world-class plants have adopted JIT, quickchangeover techniques, Kanban and other methods that Toyota used. Though organized Kaizen worked well for a long time, the labor crisis in the early 1990s made Toyota realize that it needed to adopt a new approach. The company began an exercise to modify the way it implemented Kaizen to attract workers by making its assembly lines more human-friendly. THE MODIFICATION The modification began with the management deciding to allow plants to set their own annual production efficiency targets. The production divisions council, which checked the plants objectives occasionally modifying them, taking into account the companys

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profit targets, replaced the production allowance councils. After approval, these objectives became the Kaizen norm of each plant in terms of production efficiency. The method of determining the production efficiency was altered to make it less constrained as the standard time was fixed by measuring the time really required for workers operations whereas earlier standard time was fixed on the basis of the best standard time marked in the past. The try teams started considering the working segments where young female workers and aged workers were employed for fixing the standard time. Prior to the 1990s, the try team used to consider only skilled male workers for fixing the standard time. The standard time was fixed on the basis of the best standard time marked in the past, while after modifications it was fixed by measuring the time required for workers operations three months after launch of mass production. After negotiations with the unions, the management decided to reduce the long annual working hours and the method of calculating the production allowance was altered for blue collar workers and removed for white collar workers. The production efficiency was now determined with respect to the activities of all workers including permanent employees, workers in Kaizen groups and maintenance team workers while earlier only permanent workers were considered for this category. The production efficiencies were classified through a group of homogeneous factories such as a group of foundries, forges, and stamping and sheet metal shops because of a difference in the mechanization level among them, which affected the production efficiency. The production efficiency of all workers within the group was classified into three levels A, B and C to determine their production allowance. The method of work in the assembly line was revised to reduce the high turnover rate and also to enable young female workers and aged workers to work there. The production engineering division developed the Toyota Verification of Assembly Line (TVAL) to measure the workload of all operations. Those operations whose TVAL value was higher than a certain level were discontinued as they were considered as heavy operations. After discussions with workers, the assembly line was divided into 10 segments with every worker having a buffer work corresponding to five minutes of operations so that even when work was stopped in one segment because of a problem, the others could continue to work. The buffer reduced the workers idle time to a large extent as it absorbed the loss of time when work was stopped in a segment. The assembly lines at various Toyota plants were reorganized by organizing engineers, try team staff, chief leaders and group leaders so that they could collaborate to have an ideal assembly line about which no on had any clear conception. The reconstruction of the assembly line was as follows: Construct an assembly line where workers could work easily and execute their operations. Organizing a human-centered TPS. Form a Kaizen mind in everyone so that he/she willingly does Kaizen.

Toyota made sure that the new assembly line ensured:

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The absence of any operations difficult to execute. Quality and worker security assurance. Efficiency in logistics. Assembling a vehicle in the shortest time possible with minimum cost. High investment returns.

There were many problems in organizing the new assembly line, as it required collaboration amongst the workers like never before. For this a teamwork feeling was created among the workers to help them settle easily into the new setup. The chief leaders group carried on Kaizen of production processes over several working groups in order to realize operation in the fixed zones, while the group leaders engaged in the improvement of workers tasks. The groups discussed all theses activities to share the know-how and problems. Along with the orientations, the maintenance teams were directed to improve the reliability of equipment in collaboration with the engineers. A logistic team installed the logistic system in the plant for security. Until the beginning of the 1990s, wages for all employees were calculated as follows: [BW (1 + PAC) (1+ OPC); where BW = Basic wage; PAC = Production Allowance Coefficient and OPC= Overtime Production Coefficient.] This calculation put workers under a lot of pressure as the wages were completely a function of their productivity. Toyota identified this as one of the major reasons for the increasing labor exodus and decided to change its wage system. In 1990, the company introduced the concepts of grade allowance (GA, 10% of standard wage) and age allowance (AA, 10% of standard wage). The GA and AA components resulted in the share of production allowance going down from 60% to 40%. Toyota once again changed its wage system in 1993 by introducing two wage systems, one for blue-collar workers and one for white-collar workers. The wages for blue-collar and white-collar workers were calculated as follows: Blue Collar - [Standard wage = Basic wage (40%) + GA (20%) + AA (20%) + PA (20%)]. White Collar - [Standard wage = Basic wage (40%) + GA (40%) + AA (20%)]. The new wage system was further brought down the share of production allowance from 40% to 20%. Following the implementation of the above measures, Toyota successfully reduced the annual working hours by 300 working hours during 1991-1993. A successive two shifts work without night shifts was set up in 1995, to reduce overtime work. According to Toyota sources, the above activities increased employee participation in Kaizen activities significantly. The number of employees at Toyota also increased from 1,08,167 in 1992 to 1,10, 534 in 1994 and to 2,15,648 in 2001 (Refer Exhibit I). The main reason why Toyota encouraged employee participation was because it believed in nourishing the Kaizen mind and ability of the workers to accept and welcome changes that had become necessary with the changing business dynamics.

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QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: 1. 1. Kaizen means improvement in work life, social life, personal life of a person. Explain how Kaizen can be useful to organizations to improve their operational efficiency and competitive advantages. 2. 2. Toyota people dont believe in perfection only improvement. Justify this statement by explaining the role played by Kaizen in Toyotas success. 3. 3. In the early 1990s, Toyota employed Kaizen costing for cost reduction, which according to analysts was imposed on the workforce, leading to the labor crisis. Do you agree with the above statement? What steps should an organization take to avoid such problems in adopting practices such as Kaizen? EXHIBIT I TOYOTA - BUSINESS RESULTS (CONSOLIDATED, US GAAP) (1 = 1 million) Year ended March 31, Net sales Income before income tax Net income Net income per share (Basic) Net income per share (Diluted) 1998 11,566,368 873,065 436,935 144.86 144.26 1999 12,687,421 875,674 451,646 119.47 119.47 2000 12,649,77 7 880,680 481,936 128.27 128.27 2001 13,137,070 1,107,289 674,898 180.65 180.65

Note: For further information, please go to:http://www.toyota.co.jp/ir. TOYOTA BUSINESS RESULTS (CONSOLIDATED, JAPAN GAAP) (1 = 1 million) 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 Net Revenue 10,718,74 12,243,83 11,678,39 12,749,00 12,879,56 0 5 7 9 1 Income 420,801 708,299 884,516 771,885 750,501 before income tax Net Income 256,977 385,916 454,350 356,180 406,798 Vehicle 3,849,817 4,293,682 4,233,371 4,458,406 5,002,731 Production (units) Vehicle Sales 4,148,641 4,559,515 4,456,344 4,695,147 5,182,774 (units) Employee 146,855 150,736 159,035 183,879 210,709 Capital 471,300 664,400 788,742 973,479 871,329 T.K.RAMASUBBU

2001 13,424,423 864,129 471,295 5,275,213 5,526,863 215,648 860,821 11

Investment* Depreciation* 405,881 R&D N.A. spending

446,796 450,700

508,380 444,400

606,134 487,300

689,435 453,300

672,567 479,900

*: Not including vehicles for leasing. Source: www.toyota.com EXHIBIT II TOYOTA PRODUCTION STATISTICS Vehicles) 1993 1994 North 532.8 581.3 America Latin 2.6 3.7 America Europe 49.5 93.5 Africa 81.1 76.7 Asia 161.9 222.7 Oceania 58.7 68.5 Middle 2.1 4.8 East Overseas 888.7 1,051. Total 3 Domestic 3,561. 3,508. Total 8 5 Worldwide 4,450. 4,559. Total 5 8 Source: www.toyota.com 1995 729.9 3.7 95.5 87.7 259.0 54.1 23.3 1,253. 3 3,171. 3 4,424. 6 1996 783.0 3.2 124.4 85.1 255.1 67.6 27.7 1,346. 0 3,410. 1 4,756. 1 1997 838.3 3.8 108.8 91.2 246.7 77.6 23.8 1,390. 1 3,502. 0 4,892. 1 1998 962.8 15.3 175.7 74.1 124.8 100.4 14.4 1,467. 6 3,165. 8 4,633. 4 1999 1,061. 9 16.8 181.5 68.4 182.1 91.0 9.4 1,611. 0 3,118. 2 4,729. 2 (1=1,000 2000 1,104. 0 19.6 173.3 77.5 248.4 92.4 36.1 1,751. 4 3,429. 2 5,180. 6 2001 1,088.5 17.8 216.9 77.5 254.3 94.6 31.0 1,780.6 3,354.4 5,135.0

ADDITIONAL READINGS & REFERENCES:


1. 1.

Vasilash S. Gary, the Toyota Production System At the Other Toyota, Automotive Manufacturing & Production, July 1998. 2. 2. Chappell Lindsay, Toyota Studies Toyota, Automotive News, August 24, 1998. 3. 3. The Rediff Business Interview/Masaaki Imai, www.rediff.com, September 30, 1999. 4. 4. Toyota Driving its Production Model, Material Handling Management, July 2000. 5. 5. Vasilash S. Gary, How Toyota Does ItEveryday, Automotive Manufacturing & Production, August 2000. 6. 6. Teresko John, Toyotas New Challenge, Industry Week, January 15, 2001. 7. 7. Becker M. Ronald, Learning to Think Lean, Automotive Manufacturing & Production, June 2001.

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8. 8.

Strozniak Peter, Toyota Alters Face of Production, Industry Week, August 13, 2001. 9. 9. The Missing Ingredient, Quality Digest, November 2001. 10. 10. Making Things: The Essence and Evolution of the Toyota Production System, www.toyota.com, March 2002. 11. 11. What is Toyotas Engine of Success?, www.toyota.irweb.jp 12. 12. Koichi Shimizu, Transforming Kaizen at Toyota, Okayama University. 13. 13. www.kaizen-institute.com 14. 14. www.cclink.com 15. 15. www.toyota.com

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