Toyota Is a Learning Organization

Essay 1

As the concept of learning organization on the textbook, the learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights. As I see, Toyota Motor Corporation a Japanese automaker is one of the best examples of learning organization. In the Toyota, an efficiency and improvement techniques is depend upon the workers to reduce inventory, identify hidden problems, and fix them. Through the relentless reflection (hansei) and continuous improvement (hazien), which over time trains everyone to become better problem solvers.

The first activity of the Toyota about solving problems systematically is it identifies root cases primarily using a “five why’s” to determine the root cause of a problem. For example, one of the level of problem is “there is a puddle of oil on the shop floor. There is correspond level of countermeasure is “clean up the oil”. If the level of problems is “because we got a good deal (price) on those gaskets”, the correspond level of countermeasure is “Change purchasing polices”. The second activity is use Hansei that is a concept that Toyota uses as a practical improvement tool include responsibility, self-reflection, and organization learning. As hansei is utilized, the improvement are fed back into the organization and disseminated. The third activity is utilize policy deployment which is a process of cascading objectives form the top of the company down to the work group level. The process as it permeates the organization follows the plan-do-check-act probes. It was being measure and monitored on a regular basis. The last activity is Toyota has relentlessly pursed success rather than pursed several flavors of the month over years with little results. （http://www.emsstrategies.com/dd080104article2.html，The Toyota Way)

Essay 2

Starbucks is good example that the company attempts to balance characteristics of sustainability:...