Toyota is often cited as the inspiration for Lean, but its success is rooted in leadership behaviors, management systems, and a deep commitment to learning—not tools or slogans. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on Toyota’s approach to quality, continuous improvement, psychological safety, and respect for people. Many of these posts explore what leaders outside Toyota often misunderstand—and what truly matters if they hope to learn from Toyota rather than copy it.
tl;dr: A senior Toyota leader explains why the Toyota Production System is widely misunderstood. TPS is not just a set of tools, not just “lean production,” and not primarily about cutting costs. As Nampachi Hayashi explains, TPS is a total…
Here is my latest article for “The Lean Post” and the Lean Enterprise Institute: But TPS Doesn’t Apply to Us….” We hear that a lot. “But patient aren’t cars.” Well, true. “But we build planes, those are more complicated than…
Joining me for Episode #334, all the way from Australia, is Barry McCarthy. Barry spent more than 15 years in leadership roles with Toyota in Australia and now works as an Associate with consulting firm Honsha. We were able to…
tl;dr: The Red Bead Experiment demonstrates how firing “low performers” based on arbitrary targets or rankings punishes people for system-driven variation, not individual effort. Bad metrics and poor leadership can create outcomes that look discriminatory, even when intent isn’t–highlighting why…
My guests for Episode #333 are Jean-Marc Legentil and Marc-Olivier Legentil, father-and-son Lean consultants from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. They work together in the firm Bell-Nordic Consulting. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting both of them on numerous trips to Montreal…
Jason Burt shares what it was really like to be coached directly by Toyota during Herman Miller’s early TPS journey. In this episode, we explore how Toyota develops people first, why results follow culture, and what many Lean transformations get…
Joining me today for Episode #330 of the podcast is Christoph Roser, a professor of production management at the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences in Germany. He has decades of experience with Lean manufacturing including time with Toyota in Japan,…
tl;dr: Toyota’s long-term success comes from treating Lean as a people development system, not a toolbox. By prioritizing learning, coaching, and growth over short-term results, Toyota builds stronger capabilities–and better outcomes–over time. When most organizations talk about Lean, they start…
Last week was our first "Symposium on Learning Organizations" where we brought together 40 people with diverse backgrounds in manufacturing, healthcare, IT, government, and other industries or professions together to learn from each other in a "PowerPoint-free zone."
In this post, I'll share some photos and reflections on our tour of the Toyota truck plant in San Antonio (TMMTX). The visitor center has been completely revamped from my last visit, just as the one visitor center I saw in Japan back in March had been redone.
Today is a throwback to a throwback, in a way. Five years ago, I blogged about how the term "Lean Production" was 25 years old...
Today, I'll be touring the Toyota truck plant in San Antonio again, the plant known as TMMTX. I'm there with our "Symposium on Learning Organizations" group, all 40 of us. In this post, I share some pre-tour goals and share some links to previous Toyota plant visits (in Texas and Japan).
In the third and final part of this series, I share more about how Toyota teaches about TPS and TQM... and how they are sharing that approach with doctors and hospitals.
