Toyota – The Best Learning Organization
Toyota – The Best Learning Organization
Toyota is the most famous and number one auto maker in the world. According to Statista.com, Toyota has the highest market share in automotive brands since its lead over GM in 2008.
Source: https://www.statista.comstatistics316786global-market-share-of-the-leading-automakers
Started by Toyoda family in Japan and produced leaders such as Kachiro Toyoda, Ejii Toyoda, Taiichi Ohno & Shingeo Shingo who introduced “Lean concepts” against the Henry Ford’s mass production. Toyota production system (TPS) or JIT (Just in Time), considered as the most successful production system and highly ranked amongst the manufacturing giants. How Toyota ruled the world as one single company to make such huge impact to the entire manufacturing world??
One of the main secret behind their success is the “continues learning culture” or learning by mistakes. As per Taiichi Ohno “Having no problem is the biggest problem of all” Vanvliet,(2017) means problems are considered as learning opportunities.
What is a Learning Organization?
There are many definitions but ,Stata(1989) defines that “Organizational learning occurs through shared insights, knowledge, and mental models…[and] builds on past knowledge and experience—that is, on memory.” —
Senge.(1990) says“where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.”1 And also, according to Nonaka.(1991) “knowledge-creating companies as places where “inventing new knowledge is not a specialized activity…it is a way of behaving, indeed, a way of being, in which everyone is a knowledge worker.”2
Toyota Way,
According to Liker (2012), in his book “Toyota way” he described Toyota as the best learning organization. The elements below are described as the 14th principle of Toyota’s immense success.
1. Identify root causes and develop countermeasures. Toyota identifies root causes primarily using a very simple method called the “five why’s.”
Figure 1 : Leader’s Hand Book (Source: Peter R. Scholtes, The Leader’s Handbook, McGraw-Hill, 1998)
2. Use Hansei: Responsibility, self-reflection, and organizational learning. Is a central idea in Japanese culture, meaning to acknowledge one's own mistake and to pledge improvement. In a nutshell, this concept is about reflecting on mistakes/weaknesses and devising ways to improve.
3. Utilize Hoshin Kanri, policy deployment, This is Toyota’s process of cascading objectives from the top of the company down to the work group level. Set goals start at the top level and each level develops objectives to support these goals. At Toyota, objectives are always measurable and concret.
4. It is a Long-term Journey
Transforming a company in to a learning organization is a challenging task. Toyota itself took almost a half century to become where they are today. Careful implementations of Relentless reflections, PDCA, Continuous improvements & policy deployments made their success today.
Reflection
Toyota succeeds as a learning organization as they viewed errors as opportunities rather than blaming individuals and took corrective actions and learned from them. And team members of all levels shared knowledge with one another. Toyota Motor Corporation (2001).
Toyota Lean Huddle Meeting - On the Job Learning
Source :You Tube.com
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UaMh18H9gE
References:
Stata, R.(1989) ,Organizational Learning- The key to management innovation, Sloan Management Review,1989.
Nonaka, I.(1991)“The Knowledge-Creating Company,” Harvard Business Review, November–December 1991, p. 97
Senge, P.(1990) The Fifth Discipline (New York Doubleday, 1990), p. 1.
Scholtes, P.(1998) The Leader’s Handbook, McGraw-Hill, 1998, p.267.
Liker, J.(2004)The Toyota Way:14 Management Principals from the world’s greatest manufacture: New Yoke, Mcgrew Hill, 2004
Statista.com(2018), Global car market share of the world's largest automobile OEMs in 2018 [Online]
Available at: https://www.statista.comstatistics316786global-market-share-of-the-leading- automakers
Accessed on 20th November 2019
Van Vliet, V. (2017). Taiichi Ohno. ToolsHero[Online]
Available at: https://www.toolshero.comtoolsheroestaiichi-ohno
Accessed on 20th November 2019
Toyota Motor Corporation (2001), The Toyota Way Document, Printed in Japan
Toyota is the most famous and number one auto maker in the world. According to Statista.com, Toyota has the highest market share in automotive brands since its lead over GM in 2008.
Source: https://www.statista.comstatistics316786global-market-share-of-the-leading-automakers
Started by Toyoda family in Japan and produced leaders such as Kachiro Toyoda, Ejii Toyoda, Taiichi Ohno & Shingeo Shingo who introduced “Lean concepts” against the Henry Ford’s mass production. Toyota production system (TPS) or JIT (Just in Time), considered as the most successful production system and highly ranked amongst the manufacturing giants. How Toyota ruled the world as one single company to make such huge impact to the entire manufacturing world??
One of the main secret behind their success is the “continues learning culture” or learning by mistakes. As per Taiichi Ohno “Having no problem is the biggest problem of all” Vanvliet,(2017) means problems are considered as learning opportunities.
What is a Learning Organization?
There are many definitions but ,Stata(1989) defines that “Organizational learning occurs through shared insights, knowledge, and mental models…[and] builds on past knowledge and experience—that is, on memory.” —
Senge.(1990) says“where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.”1 And also, according to Nonaka.(1991) “knowledge-creating companies as places where “inventing new knowledge is not a specialized activity…it is a way of behaving, indeed, a way of being, in which everyone is a knowledge worker.”2
Toyota Way,
According to Liker (2012), in his book “Toyota way” he described Toyota as the best learning organization. The elements below are described as the 14th principle of Toyota’s immense success.
1. Identify root causes and develop countermeasures. Toyota identifies root causes primarily using a very simple method called the “five why’s.”
Figure 1 : Leader’s Hand Book (Source: Peter R. Scholtes, The Leader’s Handbook, McGraw-Hill, 1998)
2. Use Hansei: Responsibility, self-reflection, and organizational learning. Is a central idea in Japanese culture, meaning to acknowledge one's own mistake and to pledge improvement. In a nutshell, this concept is about reflecting on mistakes/weaknesses and devising ways to improve.
3. Utilize Hoshin Kanri, policy deployment, This is Toyota’s process of cascading objectives from the top of the company down to the work group level. Set goals start at the top level and each level develops objectives to support these goals. At Toyota, objectives are always measurable and concret.
4. It is a Long-term Journey
Transforming a company in to a learning organization is a challenging task. Toyota itself took almost a half century to become where they are today. Careful implementations of Relentless reflections, PDCA, Continuous improvements & policy deployments made their success today.
Reflection
Toyota succeeds as a learning organization as they viewed errors as opportunities rather than blaming individuals and took corrective actions and learned from them. And team members of all levels shared knowledge with one another. Toyota Motor Corporation (2001).
Source :You Tube.com
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UaMh18H9gE
References:
Stata, R.(1989) ,Organizational Learning- The key to management innovation, Sloan Management Review,1989.
Nonaka, I.(1991)“The Knowledge-Creating Company,” Harvard Business Review, November–December 1991, p. 97
Senge, P.(1990) The Fifth Discipline (New York Doubleday, 1990), p. 1.
Scholtes, P.(1998) The Leader’s Handbook, McGraw-Hill, 1998, p.267.
Liker, J.(2004)The Toyota Way:14 Management Principals from the world’s greatest manufacture: New Yoke, Mcgrew Hill, 2004
Statista.com(2018), Global car market share of the world's largest automobile OEMs in 2018 [Online]
Available at: https://www.statista.comstatistics316786global-market-share-of-the-leading- automakers
Accessed on 20th November 2019
Van Vliet, V. (2017). Taiichi Ohno. ToolsHero[Online]
Available at: https://www.toolshero.comtoolsheroestaiichi-ohno
Accessed on 20th November 2019
Toyota Motor Corporation (2001), The Toyota Way Document, Printed in Japan
Hi Kelum, Thanks for bringing this Toyota organization working practices, This article is well realting with our previous module, it was interesting to learn that they used lean concepts agains Fords mass production,plus you have brought TPS and JIT to your blog,your work was fantastic, Best wishes
ReplyDeleteA superb & highly useful article to bring the Toyota concept to the context.
ReplyDeleteexcellent ,your explanation and analysis are in very high level
ReplyDeleteGreat to have this as always good to have best practices in our own process. Great work
ReplyDeleteYou have expressed the view very analytically.
ReplyDelete