Management Lessons from Taiichi Ohno: What Every Leader Can Learn from the Man who Invented the Toyota Production System

Book description

The 15 most powerful practices of the legendary Taiichi Ohno you can use to drive breakthrough productivity improvements in your company

Having spent 40 years working at the side of Taichii Ohno at Toyota, Takehiko Harada recounts his experiences transforming operations as we know them.

In Management Lessons from Taichii Ohno, Harada explains, “Good Kaizen makes an environment where work is meaningful. To create a workplace like this, it is crucial to train people in the management of a lean organization.” The book provides managers and executives with the tools they need to implement TPS/Lean within their organization.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Contents
  5. Translator’s Notes and Insights
  6. Introduction
  7. CHAPTER 1 Learning from Mr. Taiichi Ohno
    1. Lesson 1: No One Really Understood What I Was Saying, So I Had to Go to the Gemba and Give Detailed Instructions
    2. Lesson 2: Kaizen Equals Getting Closer to the Final Process
    3. Lesson 3: You Need by the Line Only the Parts for the Car You Are Assembling Now
    4. Lesson 4: Building in Batches Stunts the Growth of Your Operations (Don’t Combine Kanbans and Build a Group of Them)
    5. Lesson 5: Nine Out of Ten, One Out of Ten
    6. Lesson 6: The Foreman or Leader Is the One Who “Breaks” the Standard (When You Make an Improvement and You Can Take Out One Person, Give Up Your Best Person)
    7. Lesson 7: Multiskilling Means Learning the Next Process—Keep It Flowing Until You Reach the Last Process
    8. Lesson 8: What’s That Red Circle on the Top Right of That Graph?
    9. Lesson 9: Are You as the Manager Having Them Do It, or Are They Just Doing It Their Way? Which Is It, Man?
    10. Lesson 10: Standard Work for the Andon Is, “Go There When It Flashes”
    11. Lesson 11: Standard Work Is the Foundation of Kanban
    12. Lesson 12: When the Worker Pushes the Start Button, He Has Stopped Moving. Can’t You Guys Figure Out a Way for Him to Push Start While Still Moving?
    13. Lesson 13: You Bought an Expensive Machine, and Now You Want an Expensive Foreman or Engineer to Run It? Are You Mad?
    14. Lesson 14: Engineers in Production Become the Horizontal Threads in the Cloth
    15. Lesson 15: The Lowest Kanban Quantity Should Be Five
  8. CHAPTER 2 The Role of the Top
    1. The Management and Structure Needed to Have a Successful Toyota Production System Deployment
    2. The Role of Top Management: People Who Can Change the Structure (Rules, Organization, and Operations) Based on Changes the Production Environment Faces
    3. The Foundation of Operations: How the Top Should Look at Things from Four Perspectives
  9. CHAPTER 3 The Role of Management: Enable Your Employees to Do the Work Well
    1. To All You Managers Out There
    2. Managers Are There to Create an Environment in Which Increases in Flow Happen
    3. Giving Authority: Growing People You Can Empower
    4. Management Should Make Workplaces That Motivate People to Work and Sustain the Motivation
  10. CHAPTER 4 If You Respect Other People, They Will Trust You
    1. Talk to the Top People and Other Expatriates About Their Experience
    2. Think of Managing an Overseas Plant as a Three-Story Building
    3. Make an Environment Where It’s OK to Say, “I’m Sorry”
    4. Make the Toyota Production System a Pillar of the Management of the Entity
    5. Be Proactive in Encouraging the Toyota Production System Inside and Outside Your Company
    6. Choose a Local Manager for Working with Suppliers
    7. How to Deploy the Toyota Production System in Suppliers
    8. Top Management Must Visit and Coach Suppliers at Least Three Times a Year
    9. The Factory Must Be Run by Local Management, Starting with the Factory Manager and All the Way Down
    10. Make Japanese the Official Company Language
    11. Become an Executive Who People Can Trust. Respect Others and They Will Trust You
  11. Afterword: To Those Top Managers Who Are Thinking of Applying the Toyota Principles to Make a Wonderful Operation
  12. Index
  13. About the Author

Product information

  • Title: Management Lessons from Taiichi Ohno: What Every Leader Can Learn from the Man who Invented the Toyota Production System
  • Author(s): Takehiko Harada
  • Release date: June 2015
  • Publisher(s): McGraw-Hill
  • ISBN: 9780071849746