Akio

The three phrases I regard as being taboo would have to be: (1) I’ll think on it and try to do better, (2) We’re doing that, too, and (3) We need more man-hours and money first. These are the three phrases we mustn’t use at Toyota.

Whenever I point out things to improve, people often reply by promising to think about it and try to do better. But in 12 years of being president, I’ve found that some people stop at thinking on their mistakes, and never change.

People are also often quick to say, “We’re doing that too,” but they don’t realize what they’re actually doing is slightly different.

There are also those who always say, “We don’t have enough people or money” whenever you try to do something new. These would be the three major taboo phrases I would choose.

People like that don’t have the will to find the necessary time or money. If you want something at home, you wouldn’t say to your husband or father, “Can you double your income?” You would scrimp and save so you can buy it, right? It makes you wonder why they can’t do that at the workplace too.

Kawai

People at factories also say they want us to hold all kinds of seminars to teach them new skills. But when they take part in inter-departmental contests like the Skills Competition, they find the necessary time and money and practice on their own,, because they want to win. They don’t complain then.

They say they want more time and money, because they feel like they’re being forced to work on something new. You can make time by changing people’s attitudes.

It’s fine to reflect on your mistakes, but you have to realize that something is wrong when you make the same mistake twice.

Akio

Conventionally, the number of attendees at the regular morning meeting was limited by the meeting room size, and information about the previous week was shared only among vice-presidents and other executives.

Some things are difficult to convey through documents and words alone. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. So, we started making videos at some point. We began sharing information on not only what I did in the previous week, but also my thoughts on each event.

When it became difficult to gather people due to the spread of COVID-19, we started online meetings and inviting participants from oversea entities.

This allowed us to remove the physical limit imposed on us by the size of the room and gather huge numbers of people. Now we digitally connect over 200 people at once.

The key to physical meetings was to try and communicate with as many people as possible on a one-on-one basis. Our biggest tool at the time was nemawashi, or negotiating behind the scenes. But digital communication allows simultaneous and uniform information sharing with many people from a single source.

During the days of analog communication, talking to a supervisor may have been the final stage of a project. But today, I think you need to communicate with the supervisor, who gives out instructions, at the start to verify the objectives and intentions.

hen requests are made from the top down, supervisors sometimes fail to convey the intentions of the president to their subordinates. Subordinates do their best, but their work ends up being something that the president did not request, which is a waste of time for both parties. I believe digital communication will solve this problem.

I think there’s a generation gap, but today, we have many useful tools. Fusing the experience of older people with new points of views will lead to better solutions. I want everyone to take on the challenges of mutual cooperation in this area.

Akio

It’s like there are two factions within Toyota, with those who believe in TPS and others who believe in TQM. But what Toyota needs are the philosophy, skills and conduct that make Toyota, Toyota.

When you ask production people, they say it’s about TPS, but quality people may say it’s TQM, so it’s like there are two factions. But within Toyota as a whole, TPS is our philosophy (or origin), while TQM is a way of thinking based on that origin.

At the same time, there is an order of priority to what Toyota must value. That is, we must prioritize safety, quality, quantity and profits in that order, as we promised during our public hearing.

But I think it was the other way around before the public hearing periods. We used to prioritize profits above all else, followed by quantity. Boosting quantity would also boost profits. I think Toyota used to prioritize making cars that would sell well, leading to greater profits.

Meanwhile, cars that didn’t sell well and were not very profitable, but were sought after by the market, such as the Coaster commercial vehicle , or the Land Cruiser, which is a strong part of people’s daily lives, became subject to longer model change cycles.

Only cars that sell well underwent model changes every four years. I think everyone used to take this for granted and no one ever questioned it.

Then came, the global financial of 2008-2009. Afterwards, in 2016, Toyota adopted an in-house company system. Toyota Motor East Japan (TMEJ) was placed under the jurisdiction of Toyota Compact Car Company, while others were divided into the Lexus International, CV Company centered on Toyota Auto Body and Emerging-market Compact Car Company centered on Daihatsu.

We did this because we wanted to establish a system that would allow Toyota and its affiliated companies to focus with passion on their own models, instead of prioritizing models based on how well they sold or how profitable they were.

This resulted in Century, Coaster and Land Cruiser undergoing model changes.

This is our order of priority in developing products, and TPS becomes an important philosophy within that context. I believe it’s important to not only reduce costs as much as possible, but also to adhere to a philosophy, which in turn allows you to build skills accordingly.