The Four Ps of Toyota’s Success

Discover the secrets behind Toyota’s success and how we can help your business.

Elibro, the Toyota Way, translates into English as ‘the keys to Toyota’s success’. Author Jeffrey K. Liker explains the 14 management principles that apply to a successful company, with numerous real examples. The first part of the book discusses the fundamental 4Ps of the successful model of management that we share below.

Philosophy

“The drop of water pierces the rock, not by its strength but by its constancy.”

The philosophy of long-term thinking. Sometimes this can come at the expense of financial objectives. In the short term, management decisions have to be focused on long-term thinking. This implies a need to invest to generate customer value, the economic system and, ultimately, benefit society. To do this, each function and process of a company needs to be evaluated in terms of its ability to achieve it. The starting point lies in investing in training and developing people to optimize your long-term performance, but how? Through repeated Kaizen, constant improvements, you can move to total quality.

Process

“Time is both the most valuable and the most perishable of our resources.”

The waste elimination process. The process to correct will produce the desired results. It is necessary to create a process flow diagram to see the redundancy in the steps that are taken in each task, or the possible problems of a process. Systems associated with this tool are the just-in-time delivery, the Kanban. The problems that arise when we start the methodology to eliminate everything that does not contribute value are solved one by one.

People

“They did it because they didn’t know it was impossible.”

A good leader enhances their skills and becomes a continuous improvement expert, training and empowering their team of people through their development in the workplace. Challenges are necessary to take people out of their comfort zones and to facilitate their growth, both professionally and personally, as the key to every process is people. The greatest and most valuable asset of a company is all the people who interact in it to create value, whether they are partners, collaborators, suppliers, distributors, etc. Therefore, they are to be seen as an extension of the enterprise, as the branches are an extension of the trunk of a tree.

Problem 

“Today, better than yesterday, tomorrow better than today.”

Problem-solving is an attitude shared across the enterprise, as well as the alignment of values and objectives. To become an organization with the best Kaizen Spirit, you need the necessary values, such as commitment, creativity, resilience, flexibility, attitude positivity, dreams and, above all, love of what is done and enjoyment of doing it. Breathing and living in continuous improvement means thinking about problems and creative solutions to achieve goals. Challenging the Plan-Do-Check-Act is a methodology concerning the value of shared learning that must be repeated continuously.

“People, Processes, PRODUCTIVITY” is our motto and why many companies, day by day, manage to achieve their goals and improve their results. It all starts and ends in people.

Are you up for the challenge? Contact us today to discuss your consulting and efficiency requirements.