Customer Reviews

The Evolution of a Manufacturing System at Toyota

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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.

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.

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.

I intensely dislike the abuse of the word "evolution". This is an example. Evolution is a characteristic of a species, not the individuals that are part of the species. The individuals change by LEARNING, as best they can, not by evolving. If organizatonal practices change without conscious design, that is a perfect example of organizational learning. If the organizational practices in an industry change because the organizations who use one practice fail and those using another don't, that is evolution.