Quotes from Jeffrey K. Liker

Never be satisfied with inaction. Question and redefine your purpose to attain progress.

every Toyota team member goes through a basic set of development steps at each stage of her development, following the process of basic learning by copying exactly (shu), mastering the basics so that they become second nature (ha), and becoming so masterful at the basics that she can go beyond these and improvise (ri).

Rather the power behind TPS is a company's management commitment to continuously invest in its people and promote a culture of continuous improvement.

They started with no budget and had to justify every cost—and were told that only those costs that were absolutely essential to making product for the customer would be approved.

Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) Cycle, a cornerstone of continuous improvement. The Japanese term for continuous improvement is kaizen and is the process of making incremental improvements, no matter how small, and achieving the lean goal of eliminating all waste that adds cost without adding to value.

It is comforting to believe that if we could only implement the right cells and other lean tools to eliminate waste in the process, we could let it rip and get great results forever . . . or at least for a long time. But processes do not work that way.

Basically people will do what upper management wants them to do. So if that's consistent, if they're not whipsawed and being governed by different priorities, they learn what is truly important and what is not….

So physically shifting from batch and queue operations (explained in greater detail later in the chapter) to one-piece flow without inventory almost guarantees you will encounter many more problems. So why do it? Precisely to allow the processes to break so we can discover the weak points and improve through kaizen.

we create confusion so we have to do something different in approaching this problem.

This operational excellence is based in part on tools and quality improvement methods

Everyone should tackle some great project at least once in their life. I devoted most of my life to inventing new kinds of looms. Now it is your turn. You should make an effort to complete something that will benefit society. (Reingold, 1999)

Defining and explaining what the goal is, sharing a path to achieving it, motivating people to take the journey with you, and assisting them by removing obstacles—those are management's reasons for being. We must engage the minds of people to support and contribute their ideas to the organization. In my experience, the Toyota Way is the best method for fulfilling this role.

Source: Peter R. Scholtes, The Leader's Handbook, McGraw-Hill, 1998.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business. —Henry Ford, innovating automaker

We strive to decide our own fate. We act with self-reliance, trusting in our own abilities. We accept responsibility for our conduct and for maintaining and improving the skills that enable us to produce added value.

Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say "We have done this ourselves." —Lao-Tsu, founder of Daoism

Rough waters are truer tests of leadership. In calm water, every ship has a good captain. —Swedish proverb

We want organizations to be adaptive, flexible, self-renewing, resilient, learning, intelligent—attributes found only in living systems. The tension of our times is that we want our organizations to behave as living systems, but we only know how to treat them as machines. —Margaret J. Wheatley, author of Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time

When there is a problem, do not just keep going with the intention of fixing it later. Stop and fix the problem now.

If you are responsible for a problem and make recommendations on possible solutions, you might be asked whether you went and looked at the situation yourself in person.

Exceptional People and Exceptional Processes Must Go Hand in Hand

Respect: We respect others, make every effort to understand each other, take responsibility and do our best to build mutual trust. Teamwork: We stimulate personal and professional growth, share the opportunities of development and maximize individual and team performance.

Challenge: We form a long-term vision, meeting challenges with courage and creativity to realize our dreams. Kaizen: We improve our business operations continuously, always driving for innovation and evolution. Genchi Genbutsu: We practice Genchi Genbutsu—believing in going to the source to find the facts to make correct decisions, build consensus, and achieve goals at our best speed.

the only thing that adds value in any type of process—be it in manufacturing, marketing, or a development process—is the physical or information transformation of that product, service, or activity into something the customer wants.