TPS Benchmarking

Note to Toyota: Top Five Things to Do in 2007 as World’s #1 Automobile Manufacturer

Avatar photo By Jon Miller Published on December 23rd, 2006

According to a Wall Street Journal article today Toyota Is Poised to Surpass GM As the Top Car Maker Next Year. That would be 9.04 million vehicles, just ahead of General Motors. Congratulations are premature, but it’s not too early to start thinking about New Year’s resolutions for the worlds biggest car company. Here are five things I would like to see Toyota do in 2007:
1. Remain humble. You’ve got plenty of practice at this, but we all know it’s not easy.
2. As the single largest supplier of carbon-emitting vehicles in the world, take a leading role in promoting lifestyles and technologies to reverse global warming.
3. Keep telling the world how you did it. Not only is it good for our business when the world learns more about the Toyota Production System, I believe it’s also good for people.
4. Don’t just apologize, tell us what’s really up with those millions of recalls.
5. Start talking to Tesla Motors about licensing their technology for mass market versions of their cars. Sure the hybrids are nice, but…
If all you do is make more cars than anybody else, and do it better than anybody else, I will be disappointed. Toyota, you know you are capable of much more than that.

Avatar photo

Jon Miller

Jon has dedicated his 25+ year career to the field of kaizen, continuous improvement, and lean management. Jon spent the first eighteen years of his life in Japan, then graduated from McGill University with a bachelor’s in linguistics.

  1. Xander

    December 26, 2006 - 9:44 am
    Reply

    Toyota needs to License Tesla Motors technology, then offer the option of a small diesel generator sufficient to maintain the battery charge level at say..20% thus allowing a trip from anywhere to anywhere for the 20-50% of the times I (and most others) would need it. This would be a car that could be all things for all people – you know – mass market appeal – I could stop waiting and make my purchase.

  2. Jun San Juan

    August 14, 2007 - 2:23 am
    Reply

    “Be at the vanguard of the times through endless creativity, inquisitiveness and pursuit of improvement.”
    http://waterpoweredcar.com/stanmeyer.html
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lud1qceKqyQ;
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMWd6T_hbhQ;
    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8346441546420435391&q=cars+is%3Afree;
    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2995927534152178817
    BEST ELECTROLYSIS SYSTEM 1/2 AMP RESPECT TO STANLEY MEYER; BEST ELECTROLYSIS SYSTEM WATER SPLITTERS TO REPLACE SPARK PLUGS;
    With a proven alternative fuel source, a running model under the same brand (Daniel Dingel’s Toyota Sample) – it will address the most crucial point No. 2 of the company’s target assuring the “healing process” of the earth quickly dying due to global warming. Listen to Al Gore.
    If Toyota prides itself with being the leader of inventivesness, best practices – then this is the APEX of all its set out goals. “Think outside the box…?”. What does all these matter if the world we are living in is dying because of what we are producing? Time to step up.

  3. Anonymous

    August 15, 2007 - 9:54 am
    Reply

    “We know our resources are stretched thin; there’s no doubt about that,” Mr. Watanabe says. “But at least we are beginning to know where our problems lie now. Our biggest fear is: What if those issues get stuffed in a desk drawer?”
    That would be a big, scary desk drawer. –
    Indeed, all the more if those “stuffed issues” are eating its way from inside the drawer and makes its presence known from way out. When the end results can no longer be covered and muffled by its large scale and worldwide occurrence. Time to re-discover that Toyota spirit. It is not a very distant step as the first automated weaving machine to the first Toyota commercial car.

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