Brief book review: The Toyota Way

Opinion: Another great book that everyone in business world should read, regardless of industry, academic background or hierarchy level, but this time about operational excellence.

Operational excellence by a company that is constantly growing since the middle of 20th century, who’s dominating car manufacturing market for past two decades, with highest levels of quality instilled in every part, from every supplier, with margin of error of 30 parts per million! This is Toyota, and in this book, you’ll find out how they’re achieving it. Author studied Toyota for more than 20 years and became “intimate” with its’ methods which he put together in a really detailed and readable way, filled with stories from top managers. Interesting thing is that Toyota never hided this amazing method of doing business, but the fact remains that many companies weren’t able to successfully copy it. This book will also show you how and why few companies succeeded.

Another great business theory author Michael Porter is a firm believer that there are two main factors for sustainable success in business. First is a thoroughly considered and flexible business strategy and the second is operational excellence in day-to-day work. If we consider Porter’s “Competitive Strategy” as a go-to book for business strategy, “The Toyota Way” should be considered a holy grail for operational excellence.

Another interesting thing that you’ll realize reading this book is how many methodologies and tools in software and business development have their origins from The Toyota Way. Lean, Agile, Kaizen etc. all have originated in Toyota, so if you want to learn the essence of them, this book can be your guide. I would also stress that operational excellence that Toyota is achieving has a lot to do with Japanese culture and their traditional values system. It would take a certain change in mind-set, particularly for people from western cultures, for complete understanding and internalization.

This book, and certainly this review, isn’t long enough to explain all this, it took Toyota more than 50 years to perfected it, but in the spirit of Toyota Way I can say that we must focus first on details to better understand the whole. Enjoy!

Author: Jeffry K. Liker; Pages: 309