The Toyota Way to Service Excellence (PB): Lean Transformation in Service Organizations

by Jeffrey K. Liker

Along the way, he cultivated himself and his own values. These values eventually become the guiding principles of Toyota Motor Company and included: Contribute to society. Put the customer first and the company second. Show respect for all people. Know your business from the ground up. Get your hands dirty. Work hard and with discipline. Work as a team. Build in quality. Continually improve toward a vision.

Jidoka would become a pillar of the Toyota Production System (TPS), conveying the notion of stopping when there is a quality problem and immediately solving the problem.

Waste is more than specific actions or objects that need to be eliminated. Waste is anything that causes a deviation from the perfect process. The perfect process gives the customers exactly what they want, in the amount they want, when they want it, and all steps that deliver value do so without interruption.

As with any other advanced skill, learning to improve processes requires some direction, relentless practice, and corrective feedback. And the practice cannot be limited to a specialized department of black belts.

In Toyota, respect means challenging people to be their best, and that means they are also continually improving themselves as they improve the way they work to better satisfy the customer.

The very basis of continuous improvement is to identify gaps between the actual and ideal and work relentlessly to reduce those gaps, including gaps in our own skills and behaviors.

Identify a challenge that will bring your organization to a new level of customer service. Understand the current state. Define the ideal state. Then break down the problem into manageable pieces—step-by-step. For each step, identify a short-term target and begin to experiment toward each target through rapid learning cycles.