Sharing the Toyota Way

How is Toyota making automobile production more environmentally
friendly?
The Toyota car is hospitable to the environment and the production
of the car is hospitable to the environment. The same level of
effort is being put into both of these areas. Recycling is making
production more hospitable - Toyota is working to achieve a 95
percent recovery rate in the near future. And we are decreasing
the amount of energy that’s required for the production line and
reducing the amount of CO2 as much as possible. Every year we
have these goals and every year we make progress using Kaizen,
continuous improvement.

How is Toyota adapting to global manufacturing?
The old way was that new models would come out in Japan and
other countries would get them a little later. But now with information
getting out to every country so fast, you can’t satisfy people
with the older models, even in developing countries. You have
to give them the newest models just like in Japan. The effort now
is to continually decrease the lag time so that sales can start in
developing countries at the same time and to maintain the same
level of quality as in Japan.

How are Toyota manufacturing and workplace innovations
influencing other Japanese industries?
That’s difficult to measure. Because of the prolonged economic
recession over the past few years in Japan, recently many companies
want to learn the Toyota Way. For example, the electronics
industry and even service industries are attempting to introduce
the Toyota Production System (TPS).


Does Toyota share its knowledge?
Toyota is attempting to help those industries but the manpower
available for that purpose is very limited.
So people have to read The Machine That Changed the World and
other sources to find out?
Many people are using these third party sources, but a few have
direct Toyota help. In the U.S., the Toyota Supplier Support Center
in Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America (TMMNA) has
been set up to diffuse TPS to suppliers.


Sharing the Toyota Way
An Interview with Toshio Ohashi, Project
General Manager, Production Engineering
Planning Division, Toyota Motor Corp.