Competing – John Shook – Toyota Culture Part 1

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Today Competing welcomes John Shook. John learned about lean while working for ten years with Toyota, helping the company transfer its production, engineering, and management systems from Japan to its overseas affiliates and suppliers. This real world experience in implementing lean principles throughout an organization gives him extraordinary insights into the challenges faced by those who are interested in lean. As co-author of Learning to See, John helped introduce Value Stream Mapping as the tool which allows lean practitioners to speak in a common language. John now spends his time researching and developing lean principles with Jim Womack, Dan Jones and Jose Ferro as a senior advisor in the Lean Enterprise Institute; In addition, John heads up two lean consulting groups, the TWI Network, a network of Toyota veteran lean production practitioners and the Lean Transformations Group,LLC, a group that focuses on total lean enterprise transformation. . and his son is a 2nd lieutenant in the United States Marines, undergoing extensive leadership training that John finds remarkably consistent with Toyota’s focus on the criticality of skill and performance of front line supervision.  John is a true sensei who enthusiastically shares his knowledge and insights within the lean community, and with those who have not yet made the leap.

#1

Toyota culture……the learning experience at Nummi.

How was Toyota’s culture/management system initially accepted at Nummi (first joint Toyota/GM venture) in the early 1980’s?

Building trust
Mutual Respect
Front line managers, Supervisors, Lead-people
The Gemba challenge – “go see”

The second half of this podcast will be available May 25, 2008

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