Extreme Toyota offers the first real, comprehensive inside look at what makes one of the world?s best companies run. With unprecedented access to the inner working of Toyota, the authors spent six years researching the company, interviewing hundreds of executives and employees, and discovering the company's secret of success. What they uncovered will surprise you and change the way you think about business. Simultaneously rigidly traditional and seriously innovative, it is precisely those internal contradictions that make the company so successful and admired.

Quality is a form of management that is composed of the double approach of driving an organization towards excellence, while conforming to established standards and laws. The objective of quality confers advantages to companies: it makes them more resilient to change that can be unexpected or even chaotic; it makes them more competitive by identify

High-velocity change is the fundamental challenge facing companies today. Few companies, however, are prepared to continuously innovate-because they focus on the short-term and do not emphasize the wisdom needed to make sure that their interests are aligned with those of society. Practical wisdom is the bases of continuous innovation, where companies ceaselessly and repeatedly creating new knowledge, disseminating it throughout the organization, and converting knowledge to action over time. In The Wise Company, legendary management experts Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi highlight how various companies have confronted the challenge of rapid change to create new products and new ways of doing business that benefit employees, consumers, and society. The key: a relentless self-renewal process where companies realize the future they envisions, rather than only responding to changes in the environment. Nonaka and Takeuchi argue that while knowledge-creating companies focusing on tacit and explicit knowledge can generate innovation, they cannot create it on a continuous and ongoing basis without having wisdom about human interactions and how they influence organizational structures and practices. Companies that have resilience, longevity, and sustainability share a number of characteristics, Nonaka and Takeuchi show. Strategies are based on alignment of organizational and societal benefits. Leaders grasp the core of any situation or problem quickly, and intuitively comprehend the nature and meaning of people, things, and events. But wise leadership is not enough: wisdom must infuse the organization through informal as well as formal shared interactions and communications that focus on metaphors and stories that convey the essence and meaning of strategies and actions. In short, Nonaka and Takeuchi demonstrate how continuous innovation results from companies ceaselessly and repeatedly creating new knowledge, disseminating knowledge throughout the organization, and converting that knowledge to action. The Wise Company presents a new model of knowledge-creation and practice for the twenty-first century.

In this book, author Sadao Nomura taps into his decades of experience leading and advising Toyota operations in a wide variety of operations to tell the story of radical improvement at Toyota Logistics & Forklift (TL&F). This book tells in great detail what the author did with TL&F, how they did it, and the dramatic results that ensued. TL&F has long been a global leader in its industry. TL&F is part of Toyota Industries Corporation, which was founded by Toyota Group founder Sakichi Toyoda almost 100 years ago. Sakichi Toyoda is legendary in the Lean community as the originator of the all-important "JIDOKA" pillar of TPS, which ensures 1) built-in quality and 2) respect for people through ensuring that technology works for people rather than the other way around. Although TL&F seemed to be performing well, insiders knew that, as the founding company of the Toyota group, it needed to do better, especially in the quality performance of its global subsidiary operations. But improvement would not be easy in a company that already prided itself in its history as an exemplar in providing highest quality products and services. In 2006, TL&F requested assistance from Sadao Nomura. The initial request was for Mr. Nomura to support quality improvement in three global operations that had become part of TL&F through acquisition: US, Sweden, and France. Improvement was expected at these affiliates, but the dramatic nature of the improvement was not. Further, the improvement activities were so powerful that they were also instituted at the parent operations in Japan. Over a period of almost ten years, the company with the name most associated with product quality experienced quality improvement unparalleled in its history. "Dantotsu" means "extreme," "radical," or "unparalleled."

The Toyota Way Fieldbook is a companion to the international bestseller The Toyota Way. The Toyota Way Fieldbook builds on the philosophical aspects of Toyota's operating systems by detailing the concepts and providing practical examples for application that leaders need to bring Toyota's success-proven practices to life in any organization. The Toyota Way Fieldbook will help other companies learn from Toyota and develop systems that fit their unique cultures. The book begins with a review of the principles of the Toyota Way through the 4Ps model-Philosophy, Processes, People and Partners, and Problem Solving. Readers looking to learn from Toyota's lean systems will be provided with the inside knowledge they need to Define the companies purpose and develop a long-term philosophy Create value streams with connected flow, standardized work, and level production Build a culture to stop and fix problems Develop leaders who promote and support the system Find and develop exceptional people and partners Learn the meaning of true root cause problem solving Lead the change process and transform the total enterprise The depth of detail provided draws on the authors combined experience of coaching and supporting companies in lean transformation. Toyota experts at the Georgetown, Kentucky plant, formally trained David Meier in TPS. Combined with Jeff Liker's extensive study of Toyota and his insightful knowledge the authors have developed unique models and ideas to explain the true philosophies and principles of the Toyota Production System.

Business Process Management (BPM) has become one of the most widely used approaches for the design of modern organizational and information systems. The conscious treatment of business processes as significant corporate assets has facilitated substantial improvements in organizational performance but is also used to ensure the conformance of corporate activities. This Handbook presents in two volumes the contemporary body of knowledge as articulated by the world's leading BPM thought leaders. This second volume focuses on the managerial and organizational challenges of BPM such as strategic and cultural alignment, governance and the education of BPM stakeholders. As such, this book provides concepts and methodologies for the integration of BPM. Each chapter has been contributed by leading international experts. Selected case studies complement their views and lead to a summary of BPM expertise that is unique in its coverage of the most critical success factors of BPM. The second edition of this handbook has been significantly revised and extended. Each chapter has been updated to reflect the most current developments. This includes in particular new technologies such as in-memory data and process management, social media and networks. A further focus of this revised and extended edition is on the actual deployment of the proposed theoretical concepts. This volume includes a number of entire new chapters from some of the world's leading experts in the domain of BPM.

This book assesses the achievements of the software engineering discipline as represented by IT vendors in Japan in order to deepen understanding of the mechanisms of how software engineering capabilities relate to IT vendors’ business performance and business environment from the perspective of innovation and engineering management. Based on the concepts of service science and science for society, the volume suggests how to improve the sophistication of services between the demand side, i.e., IT user companies, and the supply side, i.e., IT vendors, simultaneously. The author and his colleagues developed a structural model including innovational paths, such as service innovation, product innovation and process innovation, and a measurement model including the seven software engineering capabilities: deliverables, project management, quality assurance, process improvement, research and development, human resource development and customer contact. Then they designed research on software engineering excellence and administered it with the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and Information-Technology Promotion Agency. Through statistical analyses of the results, they found that human resource development and R&D are significant fundamental conditions to improve the quality of the deliverables and that IT firms with high levels of deliverables, derived from high levels of human resource development, quality assurance, project management and process improvement, tend to sustain high profitability. In addition, they developed a measurement model based on Porter’s five forces and Barney’s resource-based view. A regression tree analysis suggested that manufacturer spin-off vendors tend to expand business with well-resourced R&D, whereas user spin-off vendors tend to depend heavily on parent company demand.

Ever-changing business needs have prompted large companies to rethink their enterprise IT. Today, businesses must allow interaction with their customers, partners, and employees at more touch points and at a depth never thought previously. At the same time, rapid advances in information technologies, like business digitization, cloud computing, and Web 2.0, demand fundamental changes in the enterprises' management practices. These changes have a drastic effect not only on IT and business, but also on policies, processes, and people. Many companies therefore embark on enterprise-wide transformation initiatives. The role of Enterprise Architecture (EA) is to architect and supervise this transformational journey.Unfortunately, today's EA is often a ponderous and detached exercise, with most of the EA initiatives failing to create visible impact. The enterprises need an EA that is agile and responsive to business dynamics. Collaborative Enterprise Architecture provides the innovative solutions today's enterprises require, informed by real-world experiences and experts' insights. This book, in its first part, provides a systematic compendium of the current best practices in EA, analyzes current ways of doing EA, and identifies its constraints and shortcomings. In the second part, it leaves the beaten tracks of EA by introducing Lean, Agile, and Enterprise 2.0 concepts to the traditional EA methods. This blended approach to EA focuses on practical aspects, with recommendations derived from real-world experiences. A truly thought provoking and pragmatic guide to manage EA, Collaborative Enterprise Architecture effectively merges the long-term oriented top-down approach with pragmatic bottom-up thinking, and that way offers real solutions to businesses undergoing enterprise-wide change. - Covers the latest emerging technologies affecting business practice, including digitization, cloud computing, agile software development, and Web 2.0 - Focuses on the practical implementation of EAM rather than theory, with recommendations based on real-world case studies - Addresses changing business demands and practices, including Enterprise 2.0, open source, global sourcing, and more - Takes an innovative approach to EAM, merging standard top-down and pragmatic, bottom-up strategies, offering real solutions to businesses undergoing enterprise-wide changes

This book provides an assorted set of reflections/lessons from the "trenches" of Lean service and brings to fore leadership challenges, new tools, and the known-unknowns (insights that very few know but many in journey of Lean transformation need to know). Lean has the ability to address a wide range of problems faced by service companies, such as: complexity reduction, sales force productivity enhancement, operations risk control, cost leadership, combining scale with flexibility, service excellence and improving employee morale and involvement. Many of the principles discussed in the book are based on the author's first-hand experience in Lean implementation.

Personal, useful, actionable and grounded in research, this book will shift your thinking from "strategy development" to "strategy discovery" to enable you to deal with today’s business challenges, engage your staff and boost your business performance. Management teams and boards are facing disruption on all sides, from morphing customer preferences to the COVID pandemic to climate change. At the same time they are floundering in strategy confusion with too many concepts and not enough clarity. In this book, strategy expert and regular Harvard Business Review author Graham Kenny releases managers and directors from their strategy haze. His simple and effective framework allows managers to navigate the current maze of ideas and approaches and maximize their competitive advantage. Kenny’s readable style is equally effective: each chapter begins with an engaging story, then builds on this with cases, client examples, sidebars and more, ending with a series of action points to provide a pathway to success. CEOs, senior-level and middle managers across all functions and sectors, including private, public and not-for-profit organizations, who discuss and set strategy for their organization or business unit will appreciate the articulated framework, illustrative anecdotes and positive encouragement this book offers.