Toyota Talent: Developing Your People the Toyota Way

There have been a number of pundit opinions as to why Toyota has been so successful. This book perhaps gives one of the best explanations -- well-trained and engaged workers. Training is usually something that has been of a secondary thought in many companies. While the pressing need for a "body" says that a worker needs to get to the line as soon as possible, there isn't time to properly train. But there's always time to correct the errors of a poorly-trained worker. If you want to know the mechanics of Toyota's method, this is a very good place to get it. And you'll find -- once again -- that Toyota didn't invent it.

Liker and Meier did a good job to explain the TWI and Standard Work in different types of industry. This book also provides many detailed examples with implementation instructions for developing talented people within organizations. As a lean practitioner, this book becomes very handy when I work with cross-functional teams. This is a must read book to all decision makers who work with people!!!

Toyota Talent is the third, and newest, book in the "Toyota Way" series: * The Toyota Way, written by Dr. Jeffrey Liker * The Toyota Way Fieldbook, by Liker and David Meier * Toyota Talent, Liker and Meier They are a trilogy of books, but each is very different and has its own unique place in the lean literature. These books are unlike a series of novels, such as the Harry Potter series (I presume, not having read them), where you necessarily have to read all of them. The Toyota Way is an outstanding overview of the Toyota methodology, philosophy, and management system. The book does an excellent job of describing how Toyota is, in a high-level manner that can be applied across industries, including the gap between manufacturing and healthcare. The Toyota Way is one of the very first books I would recommend to any executive or manager to get a sense of the overall Toyota system (helping them avoid the urge to implement selected lean tools without understanding the entire system. The Toyota Way Fieldbook was not, as some might have thought, simply a paperback version of The Toyota Way. The Fieldbook was an altogether different book, with a different purpose. As effective as The Toyota Way was, the Fieldbook was necessary for filling in the gaps in a reader's mind, someone who thought, "Ok, I know how Toyota is.... but how do *I* get there??" The Fieldbook is more of a guide for "how to implement" the Toyota Production System. The Fieldbook is one I would recommend to managers or active practitioners in a lean transformation. Now, the Toyota Way team is setting out to write what should be considered an altogether new trilogy and series of books -- related to The Toyota Way and the Fieldbook, but with a different purpose. The three books in this series are: * Toyota Talent * Toyota Process * Toyota Problem Solving These books will, I would assume, follow a similar structure and tone, each diving deep (Very deeply, based on Toyota Talent) into a single core idea in the Toyota Mindset. Toyota Talent is *NOT* a book only for H.R. professionals. If you think that developing people is the job of H.R., then don't even bother reading this book. Developing people, getting the most out of your organization's human potential, is the job of every leader in a lean organization. If your idea of developing people is to fire your "bottom 10%" each year, replacing them with better talent then, again, save your $20 and buy another Jack Welch tome. I saw a copy in an airport bookstore the other day, which was nice to see, but it also struck me as odd, since that seems like the executive market that the publisher is targeting. I'm happy for Liker and Meier if that helps sell more copies. So who *should* read this book, then? Well, I think different parts of the book have different audiences. The first section, Getting the Organization Ready to Develop Exception People, consists of four overview chapters. For the executive reader, I'd r

Seriously, if you don't read this, you'll never get any lean effort to stick. Liker and Meier are uncovering yet another huge part of the Toyota Production System: its base! Ultimately, Toyota did not invent the Toyota Production System to have a nice lean method, but to build (and sell!) better cars by developing better thinking, ie competence and judgement in all its employees - "making things is about making people" in TPS parlance. Although this aspect of TPS is oft mentioned, never has it been systematically detailed clearly as in Liker and Meier's book. We can see the effort and application Toyota brings to training and developing its people, operators and management alike. Why is this so important to lean implementation? Without it the results simply don't sustain themselves. Whereas the kaizen workshops and cost reduction efforts are the bricks that can build a budget, on-the-job training of standard work is the mortar that holds the bricks together. There is no point in improving quality or reducing the cost in a cell by going to single-piece-flow if the team members can't keep up the new standards or if the team members, team leaders and supervisors can't solve all the problems which appear in striving to work at standard. Toyota Talent shows to what extend and in what level of detail Toyota is interested in analyzing work to sustain standards and look for waste to eliminate. It also give a good idea of how to build a training program to start building on people rather than continuously building on sand. Finally, it gives detailed guidance on how to conduct on-the-job training, and how to train the supervisors to do so. Experience of working with Toyota engineers and operators is that they simply "know more" about the job at hand. This obvious but crucial factor is a definite (and hard to reproduce) competitive edge which underlies every aspect of Toyota's success with lean, and why so few companies succeed in reproducing it fully. It is no accident that standardized work & kaizen form the basis of the "TPS temple". Toyota Talent describes the foundations of TPS and sheds the light on how Toyota works hard at developing people who simply "know more." If you're a lean person, drop everything you're doing until you've read this book - it will shine a different light on the way you were going about implementing lean up to now - and open new avenues for thought and action. If you've not discovered lean yet, this book will remind you how the people side of enterprise, no matter how obvious and crucial, is currently largely absent from the business discourse (although alive and well at Toyota). We hear little these days about empowerment, participation, training and so on. This book will remind you that indeed, people are a company's most precious asset, and there is a tried and tested method to develop them. Read the book.

The book accurately captures the essence of Toyota's approach to developing their people. It gives insight into the misunderstood process of standard work and job instruction. Dave Meier's hands on experience at Toyota and practioner application in American industry keys the detail and provides real life examples. Thinking is required and must be a part of the readers application. This fact is emphasized appropriately through out the book. Many companies on their lean journey leave people development out of the equation. The book should be required reading for lean leaders.