Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

by Mike Rother (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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ISBN-13: 978-0071635233

ISBN-10: 0071635238

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"Toyota Kata gets to the essence of how Toyota manages continuous improvement and human ingenuity, through its improvement kata and coaching kata. Mike Rother explains why typical companies fail to understand the core of lean and make limited progress—and what it takes to make it a real part of your culture."

—Jeffrey K. Liker, bestselling author of The Toyota Way
"[Toyota Kata is] one of the stepping stones that will usher in a new era of management thinking."

—The Systems Thinker
"How any organization in any industry can progress from old-fashioned management by results to a strikingly different and better way."
—James P. Womack, Chairman and Founder, Lean Enterprise Institute

"Practicing the improvement kata is perhaps the best way we've found so far for actualizing PDCA in an organization."
—John Shook, Chairman and CEO, Lean Enterprise Institute

This game-changing book puts you behind the curtain at Toyota, providing new insight into the legendary automaker's management practices and offering practical guidance for leading and developing people in a way that makes the best use of their brainpower.

Drawing on six years of research into Toyota's employee-management routines, Toyota Kata examines and elucidates, for the first time, the company's organizational routines--called kata--that power its success with continuous improvement and adaptation. The book also reaches beyond Toyota to explain issues of human behavior in organizations and provide specific answers to questions such as:

How can we make improvement and adaptation part of everyday work throughout the organization?
How can we develop and utilize the capability of everyone in the organization to repeatedly work toward and achieve new levels of performance?
How can we give an organization the power to handle dynamic, unpredictable situations and keep satisfying customers?

Mike Rother explains how to improve our prevailing management approach through the use of two kata: Improvement Kata--a repeating routine of establishing challenging target conditions, working step-by-step through obstacles, and always learning from the problems we encounter; and Coaching Kata: a pattern of teaching the improvement kata to employees at every level to ensure it motivates their ways of thinking and acting.

With clear detail, an abundance of practical examples, and a cohesive explanation from start to finish, Toyota Kata gives executives and managers at any level actionable routines of thought and behavior that produce superior results and sustained competitive advantage.

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Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Mike Rother is an engineer, a teacher, and a guest researcher at the Technical University Dortmund. Rother’s work has bought him to numerous companies and hundreds of factories around the world, where he collaborates with people to test ideas and shares lessons learned. He splits his time between Ann Arbor, and Cologne, Germany. Rother has been entered into the Association of Manufacturing Excellence's Hall of Fame. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

From the Back Cover

Toyota Kata gets to the essence of how Toyota manages continuous improvement and human ingenuity, through daily practice. Mike Rother explains why typical companies fail to understand the core of Lean and make limited progress— and what it takes to make it a real part of your culture.
―—Jeffrey K. Liker, bestselling author of The Toyota Way

Toyota Kata is one of the stepping stones that will usher in a new era of management thinking.

―The Systems Thinker

By uncovering exactly what makes Toyota the standard bearer in a way that is accessible to every management level, in every industry, Rother has given the business world a true gem--Toyota Kata is a must read!”

―Keith Allman, President, Delta Faucet Company

Mike Rother's Toyota Kata is a rare and exciting event--a book that casts entirely new light on a much-heralded set of management practices, giving those practices new significance and power.”
―From the Foreword by H. Thomas Johnson, author of Profit Beyond Measure

In Toyota Kata, Rother has put his finger on the heart of the coaching process at Toyota. He has distilled the PDCA process to its simplest and most essential core. Much of Toyota's success is rooted in these subtle yet powerful behaviors Mike so clearly describes. Kata provides a level of clear insight into the key principles underlying Toyota culture in a way that can be easily understood and applied. Essential reading for any company committed to lasting culture change."
―Bill Costantino, W3 Group, Former Group Leader TMMK(Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky, Inc.)

How any organization in any industry can progress from old-fashioned management by results to a strikingly different and better way.

―James P. Womack, Chairman and Founder, Lean Enterprise Institute

--This text refers to the hardcover edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B002NPC0Q2
Publisher ‏ : ‎ McGraw-Hill Education; 1st edition (September 4, 2009)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 4, 2009
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 10256 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Up to 4 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 337 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #149,863 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
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Customer Reviews:
436 ratings

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Mike Rother

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Thank you to all the people, teams and organizations practicing the patterns of the Improvement Kata and Coaching Kata, to develop greater scientific thinking and adaptiveness—for meeting challenges. We're learning with you!

Visit the Toyota Kata Website at: www-personal.umich.edu/~mrother

Customer reviews

5 star		79%
4 star		14%
3 star		4%
2 star		1%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Douglas Jones

A Facinating Look Behind the Curtain

Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2013

Verified Purchase

Tools, rules, techniques are necessary, but not sufficient to move an organization toward a culture of continuous improvement. It is indeed the daily behavior of the people inside the framework of the organization that defines the culture. The Improvement Kata and the Coaching Kata are not new, but they are explained here in a way that makes them an integrated whole and accessible to anyone who will take the time to study this excellent work. I remember back in the 80s when I first read Tom Peter's "In Search of Excellence". He described what is essentially the Improvement Kata and to a lesser degree the Coaching Kata. I remember how shocked I was to read his prescription for revitalizing continuous improvement -- i.e. that organizations must "fail faster". He was of course referring to rapid PDCA cycles where learning rapidly builds upon learning (through failure and success) in a never ending procession toward ever better processes. The Coaching Kata is what ties it all together so that through "respect for people" the Improvement Kata can grow progressively stronger and more pervasive throughout the organization. This is the key to what I've always thought of as "continuously improving the improvement system". Without the Coaching Kata, each improvement effort, regardless of how successful, is robbed of its full potential to create not just process change, but change in the people who created the process change. This evolution of the people, not just the processes, that is the key. Rother explains how this works with clarity and precision. I highly recommend this book.

16 people found this helpful

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iffish

By FAR the best of the 15+ "Lean" books I've read. Don't waste time on the others until you read this one.

Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2017

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I'd previously given this book a 5 star review based upon reading. Now I can reaffirm based on DOING! Two weeks ago we launched our first real Lean "experiment"/ improvement process. I took the role of mentor in the teaching kata, and guided my Production Manager to help me write an A3 for how to dramatically reshape our shipping department. I didn't feel entirely comfortable, as I didn't have solid experience with ANY of the tools which are touted to fill up most "Lean" books. But by simply simply writing and mentoring the teaching of an A3, as taught in this book, we discovered all sorts of issues we hadn't been considering. And then, when we began to implement the formal plan -- as this book forewarned us to expect -- we uncovered a lot of additional considerations. That was several weeks ago. We are continuing to iterate on the improvement kata; it is clear we are on the right track to substantial improvement in the department and it is also more clear than ever that Lean isn't about "quick fix", short-term thinking (another lesson from this book).

I've now purchased SIX copies of the book as we are picking up speed, proceeding to roll Lean out through all the aspects of our national business. It will doubtless take me years to really feel I am a fully experienced "Lean" practitioner. But I can't praise this book enough: Forget reading all the other books until you've really read this one. I wish I could take at least one star away from pretty nearly all the other Lean books out there so this one would really stand out as the shining STAR that it is.
----
Previous review:
Of the probably 15 books I've read so far on "lean", this one stands alone in actually trying to teach the thinking *behind* Toyota's mindset of continuous improvement. As the author himself admits -- despite all the books, seminars, and consulting -- NOBODY has yet duplicated Toyota's results. You can be pretty sure you will fail, also, if you try to implement lean as a group of tools taught by a consultant. The tools are absolutely the LEAST important aspect of Toyota's success.

In the author's words: "What we have been doing is observing Toyota's current visible practices, classifying them into lists of elements and principles and then trying to adopt them. This is reverse engineering ... and it is not working so well."

I do think Lean has a lot to offer; It only makes sense that there a better and worse ways to do everything and that improvement really has no limits.

The proper place to start, and to ground, is in the philosophy and more subtle behaviors at Toyota. The particular techniques are pretty much valueless without culture change and this is the only book I've read so far which really teaches that.

11 people found this helpful

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Blue

In my Top 5 Lean Manufacturing Books.

Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2018

Verified Purchase

Excellent Book. This covers what you need to know to start teaching the improvement Kata. If you want to develope your teams capabilities and learn how to be a better hands on coach then read this book. I thoroughly enjoyed the examples that were outlined. Take the book serious and put actions into your daily practice.

2 people found this helpful

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Leif C. Ulstrup

The focus on the underlying culture and mindset to achieve high performance is what distinguishes this book

Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2013

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My background is in process improvement for over 25 years. Much of the writing and approach to process improvement focuses on the mechanics and not the underlying management philosophy necessary to achieve high performance through continuous improvement.

In contrast, the author does a great job at describing his deeper insights about the intellectual foundation of what has made Toyota such a dominant force. He makes those ideas accessible to a wide audience of managers who want to adopt these ideas through examples and easy to grasp models.

I look forward to applying these ideas and coaching techniques to help my team achieve our current "target conditions" and long term vision.

For those in senior management roles, I highly recommend reading The Four Disciplines of Execution which is a complementary set of ideas that starts at the organizational strategy level. These two books together make for a powerful combination around implementation of modern CPI thinking.

5 people found this helpful

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Jim Worthy

Sustainable Quality Disciplines

Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2015

Verified Purchase

Do you care about Quality? Do you care enough to think about it, study it, practice it, and discipline yourself to achieve it?

If you do, treat yourself to Mike Rother and associates' thoughts on the subject. Read carefully, you will find a perspective, a discipline, and tools that can help you achieve satisfaction from your attention and skillful work.

Placed in the context of the Toyota Production System, Mike Rother offers the benefit of years of observation, study, and practice in the kata of continuous improvement. My personal application is not in a manufacturing context and therefore must be adapted to fit the time constants and activities particular to my institution's work but the principles are clear and implementable.

The down side, at least from a short term "I want results and profits NOW!" perspective, is that it takes time, especially at the institutional level, to achieve noticeable results. So, pick your payoff.

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Mr. Ross Maynard

Perhaps the Most Important Book on Lean in the last 10 Years

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 16, 2010

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"Toyota Kata" could be the most important book on "lean" since "The Toyota Way". Based on six years research at Toyota, Mike Rother's book provides a very readable and straightforward approach to embedding continuous improvement - putting the "principles" of the Toyota Production System into action.

Interestingly, Mr Rother argues that the "Kaizen Event" approach to improvement is not effective or sustainable because, at best, each process area will only get one or two bursts of improvement in a year. This is not continuous improvement and does truly engage the workforce. He also argues that such events produce lists of improvements which are taken on by engineers and managers as "projects" to be completed. The project approach to improvement has little impact on changing the culture of the organisation.

Instead Mike Rother argues for constant daily improvement - thus "kata" - a simple PDCA routine which is enacted every day by everyone in the process, and supported and coached by managers and team leaders who have roughly 50% of their time allocated to teaching this approach to improvement. Small step-by-step improvements are more effective over time than occasional kaizen bursts, and have a significantly greater impact on the organisation culture -creating an environment of involvement and improvement.

The book describes this "improvement kata" routine with a rapid cycle of small improvements. It is one of the most interesting books I have read in years. The "lean tools" are touched on briefly - described as methods for highlighting obstacles in a controlled manner for improvement - but this book is about the behavioural routines that, by persistent and regular teaching at all levels in the organisation, become the embedded culture.

Everyone working in the field of lean, in any industry or organisation, should read this book. It will open your eyes to what is really necessary. If you only read one business book this year, then this should be it. This book has changed my thinking on lean - particularly on implementation. It is truly an excellent work.

15 people found this helpful

Alex

Measured Improvement is the Only Way

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 5, 2019

Verified Purchase

This is essentially what the aviation industry embraced in the 70s and what the healthcare industry is thankfully embracing. Put aside your false confidence and expert opinion underpinned by unconscious human bias. Develop insight and show measured improvement.

3 people found this helpful

Ricardo Calles

Superb.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 18, 2017

Verified Purchase

Mind blowing book. It didn't win the Shingo's price by accident. Profound topics discussed in a readable way, a real page-turner. If you are more interested on HOW to think about continuos improvement than WHAT to think, then stop everything you are doing and start reading this. WARNING: you won't be able to put it down before you finish it.

I wish it would be available in kindle for Ireland...

3 people found this helpful

Scott Dake

Definitely worth a read.....

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 13, 2019

Verified Purchase

Addresses the main issue with toyota system in many other companies. They couldn’t get the same results..... this looks at why and what people are missing....

One person found this helpful

Marine or not marine that is the question?

A challenge of behaviours

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 24, 2013

Verified Purchase

A powerful insight into behaviors of a company that continues to excel.

This challenge is not for the faint hearted or those without belief.

Any senior leader with a will and desire to continuously improve should read this book and set about changing an old outraged management system to a Kata management system.

One person found this helpful