Fortune The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time: How Apple, Ford, IBM, Zappos, and others made radical choices that changed the course of business. by Harnish Verne & Collins Jim & Editors of Fortune Magazine

Author:Harnish, Verne & Collins, Jim & Editors of Fortune Magazine [Harnish, Verne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BUS000000, Business
ISBN: 9781603204415
Publisher: Time Inc. Home Entertainment
Published: 2012-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

TOYOTA PURSUES ZERO DEFECTS

* * *

By Alex Taylor III

* * *

When Toyota made the decision to put quality first, the move wasn’t as obvious as it might seem today. The company was struggling. When it started shipping its first cars to the American market in the late 1950s, they were met with derision for their shoddy quality. In the midst of this crisis, president Taizo Ishida decided to do one of the hardest things for any company—especially a Japanese one—to do. Toyota adopted the ideas of an outsider—in this case the quality guru W. Edwards Deming—and turned its entire organization upside down in order to improve itself. Today the company’s quality system, known as the Toyota Way, has been adopted by manufacturers and, yes, even service firms around the world. The Toyota Way, for example, helped the company design cars faster than its competitors, proving that the process was just as important for “brain work” as it was “back work.” Executing this process, however, is a lot harder than it looks, and even Toyota in recent years has struggled with quality problems. By reapplying the Toyota Way with renewed vigor, the carmaker is now getting back on track. Here’s Toyota’s secret sauce.

—V.H.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.