The Evolution of a Manufacturing System at Toyota [Hardcover]

Takahiro Fujimoto (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195123204 | ISBN-13: 978-0195123203 | Publication Date: August 12, 1999 | Edition: 1

What is the true source of a firm's long-term competitive advantage in manufacturing? Through original field studies, historical research, and statistical analyses, this book shows how Toyota Motor Corporation, one of the world's largest automobile companies, built distinctive capabilities in production, product development, and supplier management. Fujimoto asserts that it is Toyota's evolutionary learning capability that gives the company its advantage and demonstrates how this learning is put to use in daily work.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is much more than a book about Toyota or a book about manufacturing....The book contains important contributions to the theory and practice of organizational learning that will be equally interesting to the practitioner and the academic."--Journal of Product Innovation Management

"...the book reveals the ways a very successful, if not the most successful, automobile manufacturing company operates on various levels....useful for those in business."--Choice

About the Author

Takahiro Fujimoto is at University of Tokyo.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1 edition (August 12, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195123204
• ISBN-13: 978-0195123203
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #507,736 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book about Toyota?, November 21, 2008

By 

Lawrence White "ljw" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Evolution of a Manufacturing System at Toyota (Hardcover)

While there have been many, many books written about what makes Toyota so successful, this one gets my vote for being the most insightful, and possibly the driest. It presents a framework for analyzing the toyota system that has influenced my thinking about systems generally, and then provides a detailed analysis of how that system evolved. I recommend it highly for anyone interested in really understanding Toyota in detail. If you're completely new to the subject you may want to start with The Toyota Way or A Study of the Toyota Production System from an Industrial Engineering Viewpoint, but not Ohno's "Toyota Production System", which has all the clarity of a zen koan.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strategic capabilities can be born unintentionnally, June 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Evolution of a Manufacturing System at Toyota (Hardcover)

A book that tries to highlight the role of system formation processes that aren't deliberately planned in Toyota. It is written after the author's past works on functional analysis of existing/planned manufacturing systems in the automobile industry and Toyota in particular. The presentation adopts the evolutionary approach considering that manufacturing systems aren't merely a product of deliberately planning. Some of Toyota's successful routines may have originated unintentionally. Social systems often evolve because of unanticipated events and unplanned behavior. This idea is related to system emergence, a concept central to his evolutionary framework. What the author has presented and uncovered from Toyota's experience can be happened in other companies or may have been taken place in other companies. This is an example of work that we cannot find easily for other successful companies using an evolutionary approach, not strictly in a neo-darwinian framework. This book gives us general idea on how company's organizational capabilities were born and helps us understand particularly how Toyota has created its style manufacturing system and capabilities. A book that is worth-reading not only by scholars and students in management and organizational science, but also by those being actors in companies' building capabilities.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strategic capabilities can be born unintentionnally, June 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Evolution of a Manufacturing System at Toyota (Hardcover)

A book that tries to highlight the role of system formation processes that aren't deliberately planned in Toyota. It is written after the author's past works on functional analysis of existing/planned manufacturing systems in automobile industry and Toyota in particular. The presentation adopts the evolutionary approach considering that manufacturing systems aren't merely a product of deliberately planning. Some of Toyota's successful routines may have originated unintentionally. Social systems often evolve because of unanticipated events and unplanned behavior. This idea is related to system emergence, a concept central to the evolutionary framework the author has adopted. What the author has presented and uncovered from Toyota's experience can be happened in other companies or may have been taken place in other companies. This is an example of presentation that we cannot find easily for other successful companies using an evolutionary approach, not strictly in a neo-darwinian framework. This book gives us general idea on how company's organizational capabilities were born and helps us understand particularly how Toyota has created its style manufacturing system and capabilities. A book that is worth-reading not only for scholars and students in management and organizational science, but also by those being actors in companies' building capabilities.