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Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 11/04/2012 12:07 PM
Stable and paranoid, systematic
and experimental, formal and frank:
The success of Toyota, a pathbreaking six-year study
reveals, is due as much to its ability to embrace
contradictions like these as to its manufacturing prowess.
The
Contradictions
That Drive Toyota’s Success
by Hirotaka Takeuchi, Emi Osono, and Norihiko Shimizu
NO EXECUTIVE NEEDS convincing that Toyota
Motor Corporation has become one of the
world’s greatest companies because of the
Toyota Production System (TPS). The unorthodox manufacturing system enables the
Japanese giant to make the planet’s best automobiles at the lowest cost and to develop
new products quickly. Not only have Toyota’s
rivals such as Chrysler, Daimler, Ford, Honda,
and General Motors developed TPS-like systems, organizations such as hospitals and
96 Harvard Business Review
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The Contradictions That Drive Toyota’s Success
postal services also have adopted its underlying rules, tools,
and conventions to become more efficient. An industry of
lean-manufacturing experts have extolled the virtues of TPS
so often and with so much conviction that managers believe
its role in Toyota’s success to be one of the few enduring truths
in an otherwise murky world.
Like many beliefs about Toyota, however, this doesn’t serve
executives well. It’s a half-truth, and half-truths are dangerous.
We studied Toyota for six years, during which time we visited
facilities in 11 countries, attended numerous company meetings and events, and analyzed internal documents. We also
conducted 220 interviews with former and existing Toyota employees, ranging from shop-floor workers to Toyota’s president,
Katsuaki Watanabe. Our research shows that TPS is necessary
but is by no means sufficient to account for Toyota’s success.
Quite simply, TPS is a “hard” innovation that...