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Chapter 4

The 14 Principles of
the Toyota Way:
An Executive Summary of the
Culture Behind TPS
Since Toyota’s founding we have adhered to the core principle of contributing to society through the practice of manufacturing high-quality
products and services. Our business practices and activities based on this
core principle created values,beliefs and business methods that over the
years have become a source of competitive advantage.These are the
managerial values and business methods that are known collectively as
the Toyota Way.
—Fujio Cho, President Toyota
(from the Toyota Way document, 2001)

The Toyota Way Is More than Tools and
Techniques

S

o you set up your kanban system. (Kanban is the Japanese word for“card,”
“ticket,” or “sign” and is a tool for managing the flow and production of
materials in a Toyota-style “pull” production system.) You plug in the
andon, which is a visual control device in a production area that alerts workers to
defects, equipment abnormalities, or other problems using signals such as lights,
audible alarms, etc. Finally, with these devices your workplace looks like a Toyotaplant. Yet, over time your workplace reverts to operating like it did before. You call
in a Toyota Production System (TPS) expert who shakes her head disapprovingly.
What is wrong?
The real work of implementing Lean has just begun. Your workers do not
understand the culture behind TPS. They are not contributing to the continuous
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improvement of the system or improving themselves. In the Toyota Way, it’s the
people who bring the system to life: working, communicating, resolving issues,
and growing together. From the first look at excellent companies in Japan practicing lean manufacturing, it was clear that the workers were active in making
improvement suggestions. But the Toyota Way goes well beyondthis; it encourages, supports, and in fact demands employee involvement.
The more I have studied TPS and the Toyota Way, the more I understand that
it is a system designed to provide the tools for people to continually improve their
work. The Toyota Way means more dependence on people, not less. It is a culture,
even more than a set of efficiency and improvement techniques. You depend upon
theworkers to reduce inventory, identify hidden problems, and fix them. The
workers have a sense of urgency, purpose, and teamwork because if they don’t fix
it there will be an inventory outage. On a daily basis, engineers, skilled workers,
quality specialist, vendors, team leaders, and—most importantly—operators are
all involved in continuous problem solving and improvement, which over timetrains everyone to become better problem solvers.
One lean tool that facilitates this teamwork is called 5S (sort, stabilize, shine,
standardize, sustain, discussed in Chapter 13), which is a series of activities for
eliminating wastes that contribute to errors, defects, and injuries. In this improvement method, the fifth S, sustain, is arguably the hardest. It’s the one that keeps
the first fourS’s going by emphasizing the necessary education, training, and
rewards needed to encourage workers to properly maintain and continuously
improve operating procedures and the workplace environment. This effort
requires a combination of committed management, proper training, and a culture
that makes sustaining improvement a habitual behavior from the shop floor to
management.
This chapterprovides a synopsis of the 14 principles that constitute the
Toyota Way. The principles are organized in four broad categories: 1) Long-Term
Philosophy, 2) The Right Process Will Produce the Right Results (this utilizes
many of the TPS tools), 3) Add Value to the Organization by Developing Your
People, and 4) Continuously Solving Root Problems Drives Organizational
Learning. Note that Part...