Jeffrey K. Liker – författare

Toyotas framgångsrika sätt att arbeta efter Lean startade en revolution i företag och organisationer runt om i världen under andra halvan av 1900-talet. I dag tillämpas Lean inom produktion, administration, konstruktion och marknadsföring. Den andra ombearbetade upplagan av klassikern The Toyota Way bygger vidare på de 14 ledningsprinciper som låg till grund för den stora succén med den första upplagan.

Principerna struktureras efter delarna filosofi, process, medarbetare och problemlösning. Den andra upplagan innehåller bland annat: - uppdaterad inblick i Toyotas strategi i en snabbfotad värld som karakteriseras av smart teknik - nya exempel från tillverknings- och tjänsteföretag som utvecklats genom att arbeta med Lean - nytt synsätt på ledarskapsmodeller - en beskrivning av planeringsprocessen hoshin kanri, som Toyota använder för att anpassa målen på samtliga nivåer och koppla dem till affärsstrategin.

The Toyota Way - 14 ledningsprinciper för Lean i världsklass vänder sig till intresserade av organisationsutveckling och kvalitetsarbete. Den ger de nödvändiga insikterna för att lära av Toyotas anmärkningsvärda framgångar och för att den egna organisationen ska kunna arbeta med ständig förbättring och ständigt lärande.

Sagt om boken"Hur man än vrider och vänder så är boken faktiskt nära nog ett måste om man vill förstå (bak)grunden till Lean. Få västerlänningar utanför Toyota har fått en sådan inblick och ett sådant stöd av Toyota som Liker har fått i sin forskning. Läs boken för att få förklaringen till Toyotas sanslösa framgång eller läs boken för att bli inspirerad till att ta ditt företag längre än du trodde var möjligt." David Salekärr, leanbloggen.se

"Detta är en otroligt intressant bok, som nu utkommit i en utmärkt svensk översättning. Jag hoppas den kommer att läsas av många, som också förstår hur kunskapen kan omsättas i våra företag och organisationer till en framgångsrik helhet för att därigenom kunna hävda sig i konkurrensen och nå framgång. Toyota står för väldigt mycket av det jag vill kalla offensiv kvalitetsutveckling." Bengt Klevsjö, Kvalitetsmagasinet nr 4, 2009.

Om författarenJeffrey K. Liker är professor emeritus vid University of Michigan.

How to speed up business processes, improve quality, and cut costs in any industry

In factories around the world, Toyota consistently makes the highest-quality cars with the fewest defects of any competing manufacturer, while using fewer man-hours, less on-hand inventory, and half the floor space of its competitors. The Toyota Way is the first book for a general audience that explains the management principles and business philosophy behind Toyota''s worldwide reputation for quality and reliability.

Complete with profiles of organizations that have successfully adopted Toyota''s principles, this book shows managers in every industry how to improve business processes by:

The Toyota Way Fieldbook is a companion to the international bestseller The Toyota Way. The Toyota Way Fieldbook builds on the philosophical aspects of Toyota''s operating systems by detailing the concepts and providing practical examples for application that leaders need to bring Toyota''s success-proven practices to life in any organization. The Toyota Way Fieldbook will help other companies learn from Toyota and develop systems that fit their unique cultures.

The book begins with a review of the principles of the Toyota Way through the 4Ps model-Philosophy, Processes, People and Partners, and Problem Solving. Readers looking to learn from Toyota''s lean systems will be provided with the inside knowledge they need to

The depth of detail provided draws on the authors combined experience of coaching and supporting companies in lean transformation. Toyota experts at the Georgetown, Kentucky plant, formally trained David Meier in TPS. Combined with Jeff Liker''s extensive study of Toyota and his insightful knowledge the authors have developed unique models and ideas to explain the true philosophies and principles of the Toyota Production System.

Toyota doesn''t just produce cars; it produces talented people. In the international bestseller, The Toyota Way, Jeffrey Liker explained Toyota''s remarkable success through a 4P model for excellence-Philosophy, People, Problem Solving, and Process. Liker, with coauthor David Meier, provided deeper insight into the practical application of the principles in The Toyota Way Fieldbook. Now, these authorities on Toyota reveal how you can develop talented people and achieve incredible results in your company.

Toyota Talent walks you through the rigorous methodology used by this global powerhouse to grow high-performing individuals from within. Beginning with a review of Toyota''s landmark approach to developing people, the authors illustrate the critical importance of creating a learning and teaching culture in your organization. They provide specific examples necessary to train employees in all areas-from the shop floor to engineering to staff members in service organizations-and show you how to support and encourage every individual to reach his or her top potential.

Toyota Talent provides you with the inside knowledge you need to

Guiding you with expert tips and training aids, as well as real-world examples drawn from the authors'' two decades of research and field work, Liker and Meier show you how to get the most out of people who live and breathe your company''s philosophy-and who work together toward a common goal.

Winner of the Shingo Prize for Research and Professional Publication, 2009

The international bestseller The Toyota Way explained the company''s success by introducing a revolutionary 4P model for organizational excellence-Philosophy, People, Process, and Problem Solving. Now, in Toyota Culture, preeminent Toyota authorities Jeffrey Liker and Michael Hoseus reveal how Toyota selects, develops, and motivates its people to become committed to building high-quality products-and how you can do the same for your company.

Toyota Culture examines the “human systems” that Toyota has put in place to instill its founding principles of trust, mutual prosperity, and excellence in its plants, dealerships, and offices around the world. Beginning with a look at the evolution of the Toyota culture and why its people are the heart and soul of the Toyota Way, the authors explain the company''s four-stage process for building and keeping quality people: Attract, Develop, Engage, and Inspire.

Drawing upon numerous examples from Liker''s decades of research as well as Hoseus'' insider access as a Toyota manager, Toyota Culture gives you the tools you need to:

Fascinating vignettes of Toyota''s innovative culture highlight the nuances of translating and recreating a people-centric culture in factories and offices across the globe. These exclusive, behind-the-scenes details are just what your company needs to successfully learn from The Toyota Culture.

Building upon the international bestselling Toyota Way series of books by Jeffrey Liker, The Toyota Way to Continuous Improvement looks critically at lean deployments and identifies the root causes of why most of them fail. The book is organized into three major sections outlining:

Section One: Using the Plan-Do-Check-Adjust (PDCA) methodology, Liker and Franz contrast true PDCA thinking to that of the popular, superficial approach of copying "lean solutions." They describe the importance of developing people and show how the Toyota Way principles support and drive continuous improvement. Explaining how lean systems and processes start with a purpose that provides a true north direction for all activities, they wrap up this section by examining the glaring differences between building a system of people, processes, and problem- solving that is truly lean versus that of simply trying to "lean out" a process.

Section Two: This section brings together seven case studies as told by the sensei who led the transformation efforts. The companies range from traditional manufacturers, overhaul and maintenance of submarines, nuclear fuel rod production, health care providers, pathology labs, and product development. Each of these industries is different but the approaches used were remarkably similar.

Section Three: Beginning with a composite story describing a company in its early days of lean implementation, this section describes what went right and wrong during the initial implementation efforts. The authors bring to light some of the difficulties the sensei faces, such as bureaucracies, closed-minded mechanical thinking, and the challenges of developing lean coaches who can facilitate real change. They address the question: Which is better, slow and deep organic deployment or fast and broad mechanistic deployment? The answer may surprise you. The book ends with a discussion on how to make continuous improvement a way of life at your company and the role of leadership in any lean transformation.

The Toyota Way to Continuous Improvement is required reading for anyone seeking to transcend his or her tools-based approach and truly embrace a culture of continuous improvement.

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 & Business

About the Book

For 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:

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.

The Missing Link to Toyota-Style Success—LEAN LEADERSHIP

Winner of the 2012 Shingo Research and Professional Publications Award

“This great book reveals the secret ingredient to lean success: lean leadership. Not only is it a pleasure to read, but it is also deep and enlightening. This book is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in lean: it’s both an eye opener and a game changer.”—Michael Ballé, Ph.D., coauthor of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager

“This will immediately be recognized as the most important book ever published to understand and guide ‘True North Lean’ and the goal of perpetual business excellence.”—Ross E. Robson, President and CEO, DnR Lean, LLC, and the original Director of The Shingo Prize

“An excellent book that will shape leadership development for decades to come.”—Karen Martin, Principal, Karen Martin & Associates, and author of The Kaizen Event Planner

About the Book:

TOYOTA. The name signifies greatness—world-class cars and game-changing business thinking. One key to the Toyota Motor Company’s unprecedented success is its famous production system and its lesser-known product development program. These strategies consider the end user at every turn and have become the model for the global lean business movement.

All too often, organizations adopting lean miss the most critical ingredient—lean leadership. Toyota makes enormous investments in carefully selecting and intensively developing leaders who fit its unique philosophy and culture. Thanks to the company’s lean leadership approach, explains Toyota Way author Jeffrey Liker and former Toyota executive Gary Convis, the celebrated carmaker has set into motion a drive for continuous improvement at all levels of its business. This has allowed for:

But what looked to some to be a sinking ship is once again running under a full head of steam. Perhaps the Toyota culture had weakened, but lean leadership was the beacon that showed the way back.

In fact, writes Liker, the company is “as good and perhaps a better model for lean leadership than it ever has been.” of innovation and growth. Yet, Industry Week reports that just 2 percent of companies using lean processes can likewise claim to have had long-term success. What the other 98 percent lack is unified leadership with a common method and philosophy.

If you want to get lean, you have to take it to the leadership level. The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership shows you how.

Transform your company the Toyota way!

Two essential guides streamlined into a SINGLE EBOOK PACKAGE

Toyota. The name says it all: Innovation. Efficiency. Quality. Excellence.

The Toyota Way—Management Principles and Fieldbook explains how the legendary automaker consistently achieves the highest levels of manufacturing and business success—and how you can achieve similar results with your own organization, regardless of your industry. Discover Toyota’s methods then learn how to put them to practical use with these groundbreaking books:

The Toyota Way—INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER!

The Toyota Way reveals the management principles behind Toyota''s worldwide reputation for quality and reliability. Dr. Jeffrey Liker, the global expert on Toyota''s Lean methods, explains how you can implement the company’s principles to:

The Toyota Way Fieldbook

Written as a companion volume to The Toyota Way, this hands-on guide takes the lessons of Toyota to the next level. Liker teams up with Toyota veteran David Meier to provide the diagnostic tools, worksheets, and exercises you need to craft the most effective approach for your organization. Learn how to:

Four E-Books in One

The Toyota Way

TOYOTA. The name signifies greatness—world-class cars and game-changing business thinking In factories around the world, Toyota consistently makes the highest-quality cars with the fewest defects of any competing manufacturer, while using fewer man-hours, less on-hand inventory, and half the floor space of its competitors. The international bestsellerThe Toyota Way written by Jeffrey Liker, is the first book for a general audience that explains the management principles and business philosophy behind Toyota''s worldwide reputation for quality and reliability.

The Toyota Way Fieldbook

The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership

In The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership, Jeffrey Liker and Gary L. Convis present a four-step model top leaders can use to create a culture dedicated to continuous improvement. The authors provide the tools to getting employees to refocus their efforts—from simply performing their singular function to delivering value across all functions. Managers learn how to foster self-development in every employee, at every level; put each employee in the position to develop others; and remove obstacles and set the types of goals that ensure every team contributes to continuous improvement and the attainment of long-term goals.

The Toyota Way to Continuous Improvement

In The Toyota Way to Continuous Improvement, Jeffrey Liker, bestselling author, teams up with former Toyota production engineer James Franz to explain the underlying thinking behind continuous improvement and why any company needs a disciplined approach to process improvement in every part of the organization. Liker and Franz outline the common mistakes in thinking that limit results, and they reveal how Toyota achieves its dual objectives of improving business performance and developing its people through following Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s teachings of Plan-Do-Check-Adjust (PDCA).

"John Dewey famously pointed out, ''We don''t learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.'' Here''s your chance to learn as the three authors reflect on the (successful) struggle to build a Lean production and management system at Zingerman''s Mail Order. Thousands of people visit and benchmark ZMO. This book delivers the backstory in a richly illustrated way."

-- Mike Rother, author of the bestselling books Toyota Kata and The Toyota Kata Practice Guide

This clever and highly engaging graphic novel details a story about one organization’s Lean journey with inspiration from the Toyota Way.

Over the years, common misunderstandings about what Lean is, what the journey is like, and how to advance have proliferated. Often, these misunderstandings come from the way people simplistically talk and think about Lean as if it is some concrete thing that you insert into an organization and step back to watch the results.

The authors, however, view the organization as a living system with interacting parts and constant exposure to the environment. It is dynamic, so it’s hard to predict what obstacles you will face next. Just when you think you have it solved, new challenges arise from the market, competitors, government regulations, and every direction you turn to. When you look at your organization in this way, you see Lean through a different lens. The goal is to make your processes and people into a more adaptive system so you can navigate through all the complexity and uncertainty to continually achieve your goals. This is how Toyota views things and they summarize the Toyota Way as continuous improvement and respect for people. Each person becomes a partner in struggling to learn and adapt, and specific tools are used in very different ways throughout the company to accomplish their goals.

The story presented here focuses on a small company called Zingerman’s Mail Order (ZMO). Tom Root was one of the founders of this spin-off of the Zingerman’s delicatessen. The deli was founded to bring high-quality artisanal food to Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The purpose of this book is not to provide a "recipe for implementation" – the authors want you to get a feeling for the struggle, for the learning process. They explain and demonstrate many Lean tools within the context of the journey and how they were adapted for this particular business. Toyota kata became the centerpiece of developing scientific thinking skills to begin to bring continuous improvement to life.

"John Dewey famously pointed out, ''We don''t learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.'' Here''s your chance to learn as the three authors reflect on the (successful) struggle to build a Lean production and management system at Zingerman''s Mail Order. Thousands of people visit and benchmark ZMO. This book delivers the backstory in a richly illustrated way."

-- Mike Rother, author of the bestselling books Toyota Kata and The Toyota Kata Practice Guide

This clever and highly engaging graphic novel details a story about one organization’s Lean journey with inspiration from the Toyota Way.

Over the years, common misunderstandings about what Lean is, what the journey is like, and how to advance have proliferated. Often, these misunderstandings come from the way people simplistically talk and think about Lean as if it is some concrete thing that you insert into an organization and step back to watch the results.

The authors, however, view the organization as a living system with interacting parts and constant exposure to the environment. It is dynamic, so it’s hard to predict what obstacles you will face next. Just when you think you have it solved, new challenges arise from the market, competitors, government regulations, and every direction you turn to. When you look at your organization in this way, you see Lean through a different lens. The goal is to make your processes and people into a more adaptive system so you can navigate through all the complexity and uncertainty to continually achieve your goals. This is how Toyota views things and they summarize the Toyota Way as continuous improvement and respect for people. Each person becomes a partner in struggling to learn and adapt, and specific tools are used in very different ways throughout the company to accomplish their goals.

The story presented here focuses on a small company called Zingerman’s Mail Order (ZMO). Tom Root was one of the founders of this spin-off of the Zingerman’s delicatessen. The deli was founded to bring high-quality artisanal food to Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The purpose of this book is not to provide a "recipe for implementation" – the authors want you to get a feeling for the struggle, for the learning process. They explain and demonstrate many Lean tools within the context of the journey and how they were adapted for this particular business. Toyota kata became the centerpiece of developing scientific thinking skills to begin to bring continuous improvement to life.

Denise dreamed of being the kind of leader who empowered and engaged her people, but was becoming frustrated and disillusioned.

Denise -- a fast-rising, young consultant at a large advisory firm -- lands a job as a manager in industry. Crisis strikes as low-cost competitors take market share and general chaos generates late shipments. Denise goes into Lean consulting mode but quickly learns her supervisors are not buying it. They''re not engaged, and they find the Lean tools confusing and a distraction from their goals of getting product out. It''s going to take some magic -- magic that''s available to you, the reader, too!

Come with Denise on a journey of discovery and skill development, as she moves beyond the tools and concepts of Lean and focuses on daily practice that helps her supervisors achieve their goals. It''s about an approach called Toyota Kata that helps anyone develop and apply scientific thinking -- an exploratory mindset of curiosity and experimentation. A mentor from an unlikely place appears and shares with Denise how to coach her team. Once her supervisors dig into real problems they face every day, they begin to engage. Step by step, with insightful inputs from her mentor, Denise starts developing the skills to become a coaching manager. She watches her team meet their current challenges and be ready for more.

When you teach and practice scientific thinking and coaching skills you give wings to your team, and new worlds of opportunity open up. If you''re a manager you''ll identify with how the team in this story goes beyond general preaching about best practices, to practicing how to get to where they want to be. If you''re a Lean practitioner frustrated with applying tools with a limited half life, you''ll learn how to develop people so they can achieve their most important goals and keep going. And if you''re already a Toyota Kata practitioner, well ... you will love this book!