The definitive inside account of Toyota's greatest
crisis—and lessons you can apply to your own
company
"Those who write off Toyota in the
current climate of second guessing and speculation are
making a profound mistake and need to read this book to
get the facts. Toyota is a company that will channel the
current challenges to push themselves to even more
relentless continuous improvement."—Charles
Baker, former Chief Engineer and Vice President for
R&D, Honda of America"Toyota Under
Fire is a superb book and should prove very helpful
to American industry's understanding of the problems
faced and how any company can prevent similar
occurrences in the future."
—Norman Bodek,
author, founder of Productivity Press, and inductee in
2010 Industry Week Manufacturing Hall of
Fame"As a former automotive supplier
executive and student of Toyota, I was concerned to see
the many negative reports and investigations into the
quality and safety of its vehicles. Toyota Under Fire
tells the story of how this great company is growing
wiser and stronger by living its culture and
values."—Michael Fisher, CEO, Cincinnati
Children's Hospital Medical Center"Just as
Toyota has put itself through excruciating
soul-searching in order to understand what went wrong,
so should we all take advantage of the opportunity for
learning presented to us by Toyota's misfortune. In
these pages, you will find that the actual circumstances
were far more complex, nuanced, and uncertain than you
saw reported in the news."—John Y. Shook,
Chairman and CEO, Lean Enterprise
Institute"The most comprehensive and detailed
review to date of the circumstances that led to the
crisis, and the events and contexts that caused it to
escalate.”—Strategy &
BusinessAbout the BookFor decades,
Toyota has been setting standards that are the envy—and
goal—of organizations worldwide. Its legendary
management principles and business philosophy, first
documented by Jeffrey K. Liker in his influential book
The Toyota Way, changed the business world's
approach to operational excellence.
Granted
unprecedented access to Toyota's facilities worldwide,
Liker, along with Timothy N. Ogden, investigated the
inside story of how Toyota faced the challenges of the
recession and the recall crisis of 2009–2010. In both
cases, the company was caught off guard—and found that a
root cause of the challenges it faced was its failure to
live up to its own principles. But the fundamentals were
still there, and the company has ultimately come out of
the most challenging years of its postwar existence even
stronger than before.
Toyota Under Fire
chronicles all the events of the recession and the
recall crisis in detail, providing valuable lessons any
business leader can use to survive and thrive in a
crisis, no matter how large:
- Crisis response must start by building a strong
culture long before the crisis hits.
- Culture matters far more than decisions made by
top executives.
- Investing in people, even in the depths of a
recession, is the surest path to long-term
profitability.
Because it had founded its
culture on such principles, Toyota didn’t need to amass
an army of public relations, marketing, and legal
experts to "put out the fire"; instead, it redoubled
efforts to live up to its founding tenet, going "back to
basics." Toyota began solving this crisis more than 70
years ago, when its organizational culture was first
established.
Apply the lessons of
Toyota Under
Fire to your company, and you'll meet any future
management challenge calmly, responsibly, and
effectively—the Toyota Way.