Toyota Culture

Toyota culture It is important to understand the Toyota way of organisational management, and unveil the reasons behind their success in order to create a desirable lean culture in any organisation. Moreover, understanding the relationship in Toyota among their core people (workers, customers and suppliers) is also important in this regard. It addition, it is equally important to know what respect for people means in Toyota, knowing how the leaders lead and how the system works and finally understand how Toyota have achieved and sustained the continuous improvement in culture. Moreover, it is important to be aware of the requirement of lean system by knowing the CSFs and the importance of people; as such factors are the key driving forces of creating the desired culture. According to Liker and Hoseus (2010), a number of companies around the world, who are involved in lean system, see Toyota as a role model. However, most of the companies, who have tried to emulate Toyota model, have failed in incorporating the example due to the fact that they are ignorant towards the internal culture of Toyota (Spear & Bowen, 1999). According to Emilliani (2008), a few successful Lean transformations have been witnessed in the past years due to the lack of understanding about the lean system as a management system since most of them view it as purely manufacturing system. More importantly, most of those companies have failed because they couldn’t understand the values and respect of people as Toyota does. In this research, the Toyota culture is taken as a benchmark for any organisation preparing to implement the lean system. Liker (2004) explains that the underlying assumption of Toyota’s culture is reliant upon two parts: the first part is external, which starts with customers; and the second part is internal that starts with respecting people and a continuous improvement in internal culture. Schein (1992) emphasises that the organisations’ leaders need to focus on the on the core of the organisation (basic underlying assumptions). Without addressing the basic underlying assumptions; the organisation is unlikely to change or maintain their culture (Young, 2000). AL-NAJEM, DHAKAL, BENNETT / International Journal of Lean Thinking Volume 3, Issue 1(June2012) 123 2.3.1 What does Toyota culture look like Liker (2004) describes the details of Toyota culture that makes it extremely strong. He highlights Toyota’s endeavours to make their people feel part of Toyota and Toyota part of them (ownership) by mixing and socialising them into the different departments from early stage. Liker (2004) further describes that Toyota’s leaders believe and have trust in their people, and understand that investing in people is the key to success of Toyota. Marksberry et al. (2011) explain why Toyota is a successful firm, by stating that Toyota’s culture offers long-term vision, incentives and rewards to help mangers in encouraging people to participate