Toyota Talent

by Jeffrey Liker, David Meier

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Editorial Reviews
Product Description

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

Identify your development needs and create a training plan
Understand the various types of work and how to break complicated jobs into teachable skills
Set behavioral expectations by properly preparing your workplace
Recognize and develop potential trainers within your workforce
Effectively educate nonmanufacturing employees and members of the staff
Develop internal Lean Manufacturing experts

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.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4 out of 5 stars

Addresses A Major Component of Toyota's Success, 2008-02-21
Information on the Toyota Production System has been widely available for over 30 years - yet, no other company has been able to completely duplicate its success. The missing piece, according to the authors, is Toyota's people. Toyota believes that this is its true sustainable competitive advantage.

A key point is made early in the book - managers want to manage; however, they must also be teachers. Another key point is Toyota's success lies not in simply picking the best people - it took one of GM's worst performing plants (NUMMI) and made it successful while retaining 80% of its original work force. (My recollection is that all were offered jobs - some, however, declined.)

The vast bulk of "Toyota Talent" is taken up with breaking down various H.R. functions to not only provide readers with an understanding, but lead them into implementation as well.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

Great Condition, 2008-02-05
I have to say the book I received is pretty much what I expected. The book is new, in great conditons with a nice hardcover.
I am pretty satisfied with my aqquisition.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

Toyota Talent - An excellent book to read!, 2008-01-08
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!!!

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3 out of 5 stars

Probably could have been a lot shorter, 2008-01-02
This book started off as a pretty boring book running on and on. It must have stated one point 3 different ways before it went to the next point. After about the 1st hundred pages it finally stopped doing that and became an enjoyable Toyota Way book that will surely help my company in our future implementation plan. I think one of the negatives is that the author made reference that this is not a DIY project (meaning that companies with no lean experts could handle this is absolute BS). I think the use of skilled trainers and some insights in using the TWI material was great. I wouldn't recommend this book, but it wasn't a total waste of a reading like Lean Thinking was.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4 out of 5 stars

Excellent description of Toyota's training method, 2007-07-28

Liker and Meier did it again and wrote again an excellent book. This time it's the first in a new series about Toyota. I cannot wait for the next ones to be released.

Toyota Talent's main content is the training methods used by Toyota which originates from the Training Within Industry, Job Instruction module. Training within Industry was a US program to help the war effort. After the war, they send the trainers to Japan to help the Japanese industry. The TWI material made it in Toyota and they improved it and started using it.

I was aware of the TWI JI module before reading this book. I always found it interesting, however, my main job has always been in product development. So, before reading this book, I was quite biased that "it will not work for product development".

Liker and Meier gradually tackled my bias. In chapter 5 they introduce the excellent task variety table. This makes a distinction between the different type of tasks, from routine to nonroutine. Then they continue describing that every job consists of all the different types of tasks. More mechanical jobs contain more routine tasks, more engineering will contain more craft tasks. I slowly move over my prejudice and start to see that even my own job has a whole bunch of routine tasks. Doing this in the beginning of the book made me more open towards reading the rest.

After this Meier and Liker go into very much detail on how to standardize work, break it down and how to train it to other people. The descriptions are incredibly detailed, concrete and clear.

In the end, it shortly talks about the talent development approach to nonroutine work, but unfortunately this was only 3 or 4 pages. The books could have included more on that subject also still.

Anyways, I learned a lot. I don't know yet how to apply this knowledge in real life, but I'm sure, somehow I will and this book will be very beneficial. Great work.

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