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Toyota Culture

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Human Resource Development in Toyota Culture
The article first appeared in the "International Journal of Human Resource Development & Management." It addresses the role of HR in a lean enterprise, explores a major crisis of trust at Toyota 's plant in Georgetown, Ky., and how it responded by reorganizing the HR function.

By Jeffrey K. Liker and Michael Hoseus
Introduction
From the founding of Toyoda Loom Works in the 1920s to the creation of Toyota Motor Co. in the 1940s, its leaders believed that the key to success was investment in its people (Liker, 2004).
The Toyota culture has evolved since the company 's founding and is the core competence of the company. It is the reason why operations are lean, cars hit the market on time …show more content…

This example reveals that Toyota is far from perfect and experiences serious problems and gives insights into how Toyota responds to problems by getting to the root cause. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the cultural issues that affect the ability to create a Toyota-like HR system in America.
What is the Role of HR in a Lean Enterprise?
The concept of "lean production" was first introduced in The Machine that Changed the World (Womack et al., 1991) to refer to a new way of looking at the manufacturing enterprise. It was distinguished from mass production by its single-minded focus on eliminating waste in all aspects of the enterprise.
An enterprise exists to add value to customers through a series of activities that transform inputs into outputs and anything other than the minimum needed to perform that value-added function is waste.
Toyota was the original model for lean and the concept of "just-in-time" epitomized the focus on waste elimination -- only make exactly what is needed, in the amount needed, when it is needed.
In fact the just-in-time principle is one aspect of a broader philosophy represented by the Toyota production system. In TPS, the just-in-time concept is one pillar and the other is to build in quality at every step of the process, not allowing defects to propagate through the value stream. The

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