<i>> establishing a culture of quality control that helped Toyota evolve into a world-leading automaker.</i><p>A lot of the JIT stuff that is so common, these days, was revolutionary, when he introduced it.<p>I'm told that many agile techniques also had their genesis in his work.
RIP Mr. Toyoda.<p>2 random thoughts-<p>1. I owned a 1987 Corolla FX GTS coupe hatchback. Manual transmission, brilliant red, with fantastic sporty design and handling. Will never love a car like I did that one.<p>2. The JIT revolution that Toyota did so well in the 70s took a long time to spread to the US. I worked on a GM project in 2002-03 where I saw some crazy problems. The same part would be called different names in different countries, so while the South African plant was awash in some obscure part, the NJ factory had a shortage and was buying it at super expensive rates from a Japanese manufacturer. Their supply chain was an absolute shit show. More than 400k SKUs with duplicates, and in many cases, their cars were using different parts when they could have standardized to a common part. They had a poster in one of their meeting rooms saying "What would Toyota do?"
Taking a small local car manufacturer and turning it into the one of the worlds biggest car makers, , overtaking all the US giants and creating the JIT process to revolutionise manufacturing is remarkable.
Their ’90s sedans were the pinnacle of cars, so perfect that The Onion wrote their first non-satire piece on why a ‘93 Camry will outlive you and your bloodline.<p>完璧な車で、誠にありがとございます。<p><a href="https://www.theonion.com/toyota-recalls-1993-camry-due-to-fact-that-owners-reall-1819577805" rel="nofollow">https://www.theonion.com/toyota-recalls-1993-camry-due-to-fa...</a>
I've seen this news of Toyoda's passing posted across various social media channels and it's incredible to see how many Toyota owners have thanked him posthumously. I remember that when Steve Jobs died. This seems similar in a sense.
I had a Toyota. It was a great car, and a real testament to the engineering prowess Toyoda established.<p>I see very clear, very interesting Innovator's Dilemma vibes, though, in how widely they've missed the boat on EVs. I wouldn't be surprised if we see Toyota lose its dominance in the coming decade. It's sad, since the Prius was such a gamechanger.<p>Maybe the passing of the torch here will let them start to catch up.
I remember being shocked in the 90s at finding out the Toyota Corolla had the highest value retention of any car according to the Kelly Blue Book. And then there was the NUMMI joint-venture of Toyota and GM and the same exact cars that would come out of that factory would have different value retention. Obviously the GM car would depreciate more in value. Brand reputation clearly matters.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI</a><p>Tesla has now taken over the NUMMI facilities.
Lots of people saying Toyota missed the boat on EVs. I'm not convinced the technology, infrastructure or battery supply is ready for true mass production of EVs. Toyota makes 10 million cars a year, they'll be selling good EVs soon enough to put Tesla to shame.
TIL: Toyota is spelled with a "t" rather than "d" because with a "t" it has 8 strokes (in Japanese), which is a lucky number.
The Toyota Production System was established during Shoichiro Toyoda's leadership. It is the company's "operating system" if you will, and has made an enormous impact, both in the auto industry and in other fields such as IT.<p>"Lean" manufacturing, a term from Womack & Jones, is based on their research into this.<p>If you want to dive in, here is my reading list for essential books on how Toyota came to build high quality cars at scale, and how it transfers to other disciplines.<p><i>W. Edwards Deming</i> - the grand old man of the field, building on a strict statistical discipline. His book "Out of the Crisis" is a wonderful treatise on his thinking including his famous "14 Points for Management". This is definitely a must read that will change the way you think about management and quality. Deming provided the inspiration for the quality movement that powered post-war Japanese manufacturing.<p><i>Taiichi Ohno</i> - one of the greatest industrial innovators of the 20th century, the father of the Toyota Production System. After spending his career relentlessly optimizing manufacturing at Toyota he wrote the book "Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-scale Production" that describes his work.<p><i>Womack & Jones</i> - Their books are great and it is well worth to read them all to see a lot of the principles and case studies for lean thinking. Also, it is quite interesting to see that software development is now rediscovering some of the things that manufacturing learned much earlier - in the case of Toyota as early as in the 1950s and 1960s. Begin your studies with "The Machine That Changed the World", a five-year study of the global auto industry from MIT and go on with the "Lean Thinking" and "Lean Solutions". They give a fascinating perspective on manufacturing and plenty of examples of the lean principles and they applications. These are the books that brought lean to the mainstream.<p><i>Mary and Tom Poppendieck</i> - with a background in manufacturing and software they were leading the effort to translate the concepts of lean to software development. They have written two great books, "Implementing Lean Software Development" and "Lean Software Development - an Agile Toolkit". Both books are well worth reading a present a both the principles and lot of cases in a friendly, colloquial manner. Highly recommended!<p><i>Matthew May</i> - I really like his approach to elegance and simplicity. May has worked with Toyota and their corporate university and his book "The Elegant Solution" offers insight into their innovation process - the principles it is built on and the practices that make it work.<p><i>Jeffrey Liker</i> - his "The Toyota Way" is a very good introduction to the application of lean methods at Toyota. This is one of the best lean books I have read. Definitely a favourite!<p>This list covers up to around 10 years ago. Please comment with recommendations for more recent books on the topic.
Jeffrey Liker wrote a number of books on Toyota and his involvement(The Toyota Way for example).<p>What is so inspiring is seeing all the generations of Toyoda build upon each other's work creating something so respected in the industry and extends to many people's personal development based on their principles alone.<p>So many great things have come from their philosophy. What a titan.
I've always been a die-hard Japanese auto fan, and I'd say cars were a huge influence to my interest in engineering. What he did for the industry at large alongside Honda is immeasurable. Always sad to see giants go.<p>さよなら豊田さま