Blazing the Toyota Way

摘要

One was the zealous mentor, the scion of a prominent clan with a vision that stretched far beyond the family business. The other was the younger cousin, a protege who knew how to make that frustrated vision come alive. Both thought they had the makings of a great company. But on that day in 1938 when Kiichiro Toyoda, the founder of Toyota Motor Corp., instructed his understudy, Eiji, to build a factory on land cleared from a red-pine forest in central Japan, neither realized they were about to make history. That plant, located in what is now called Toyota City, pioneered concepts such as just-in-time inventory control, kaizen continuous improvement, and kanban parts labeling-all disciplines common today in factories from Detroit to Stuttgart, and essential to the Toyota Way.