The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer (GENERAL FINANCE & INVESTING)

Absolutely brilliant! Just shows how bankrupt our view of management in most western industries really is! The best management book out there! These principles can be applied to anything that needs managing from your own home life to the NHS!!! When British industry and institutions like the NHS are crying out for resources and efficiency savings it is astounding that they don’t take a leaf out of this book! Given the vast savings Toyota made by analysing and eliminating waste and reviewing every process in detail, any inefficient organisation cannot fail to benefit from copying them and reaping the rewards! This is a sobering read for anyone in management. Don’t be fooled by the usual lame management failure excuses, ‘lessons will be learnt’ etc. Why not avoid them? Toyota are No. 1 for a very good reason, they don’t accept the status quo - ‘There’s Always a Better Way!’ And they find it first. Unlike many British institutions, they lionise the whistleblower and sort out the problem before it costs in money, reputation, inefficiencies or harm to the customer. It’s all about doing the right thing! Without doubt an inspiring and incentivising tome. A ‘MUST READ’ FOR EVERYONE IN MANAGEMENT! Equally enlightening is the ‘companion’ book ‘Toyota Culture: The Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way’ by the same author(s).

The Toyota Way is a great book but boy is it hard work. It suffers badly from the US preoccupation with selling books by weight. The audio book gives the whole story flow. If you want to buy the book I would recommend that you also buy the audio to keep your strength up. Put together they will become fundamental to your efforts to drive cost reduction and remove waste from your business. You really can quickly address "Dead wood issues" effectively, without conflict and in an impartial way. This package will pay for itself in hours if you have a mind to make it do so just make sure you are prepared to be bold. The big issue is you have to read the book not just buy it! Not sure the "Cuddly" Toyota pitch is that accurate but its lovelly PR for them. The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer

About to embark on a lean, six sigma or any continuous improvement course or indeed just for someone wanting to improve how they work then pick this up first. Yes it is someone dated in regards its publication date however as a back story to how Toyota was born, how it managed to evolve from a small family business into the leading light of efficient, goal orientated manufacturing en mass then its a really useful book. For a hardcover copy it's an excellent value book. There are a number of tips and ideas within it to probably improve most workplaces without the need to pay for a lean course though it is of course no subsistute for a course. I have marked as four stars simply because some of the information is repeated, however It gave me a new insight into such things as corporate responsibility to the community that all employers now seem to shout about in mission statements that dominate their web pages, employees come first and all employees should be allowed and encouraged to contribute to continuous improvement is actually the foundation that serves lean manufacturing. Very good read, insight into Toyota and having a hard copy enables you to read digest and pass to a colleague or friend.

I came across this book almost by accident, looking for a few snippets for a paper on employee motivation I was writing and was hooked. I rarely read 'populist' business books getting bored with most after 25% because normally the rest is a rehash of what you have read, however this was different. The real shame I would say about this book is that the people who should read it are the very people who wont, HR people. Everybody has this vision of worker ants being driven constantly and forced to take part in improvement sessions in their own time. However Toyota are as passionate about the well-being of their people as they about the quality of their cars, if not more so, and an average 3% staff turnover suns that up well. Yes this book is a good book for any manager to read to understand how to run a better business however I hope they also realise the real strength of Toyota is not in their lean manufacturing processes

As consultant in companies that want to significantly improve their performance I give this book (plus Colins: Good to great) as required reading for the whole leadership team. Everibody reads a few chapters, they present it within six workshops, write exam, I lead discussion. Companies later cite this as a crucial activity that changed their thinking. Higly suggested!

Thoughtfully put together Excellent book Aplicable business principles or as a personal development plan Excellent work by Jeffrey liker Gold standard Must buy

A new edition of this book is needed to accommodate the changing trends and the times that we live in

In preparation for an internal LEAN training in one of my companies business groups, I read (or actually listened) this book to be a bit prepared. The book gives a good insight in the Toyota Production System and fully describes and explains the 14 principles. Although the Japanese words are flying around, it is easy to read and understand. This is the kind of book you want to read more than once, because there is so much in the 14 principles that we can use in our day to day life. So if you think LEAN is only for production. Pick up this book and find out that it can be applied in many areas of our business and in our lives.