{ Wednesday, February 21, 2007 }
Toyota, Organizations and Inventing New Processes
This past weekend the NYT Magazine had a cover story on Toyota, whose market capitalization now exceeds that of G.M., Ford, Daimler-Chrysler, Honda and Nissan combined.
If history teaches another lesson, it is that Toyota's executives recognized early on that improving the process by which cars are designed and built is just as important as improving the vehicles themselves.
According to Womack...creating a new product like the iPod or even the Prius is a far more modest achievement than developing a new process. The former are what we normally think of as inventions, of course. But the latter, at least in Toyota's case, presents a novel way of thinking about work and the capabilities of human organizations.
LINK | 2:46 PM | TB
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