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Originally Posted by fatoni
what about lean is unique to toyotas streamlining? im involved in lean projects in the hospital i work at and there is nothing shockingly new. lets not forget the increase in recalls post lean project. relation? not sure but it raises eyebrows.
look at any japanese car from the 50s 60s 70s and you can see where they come from. hell even the miata is just a elan clone. honda 600 has mini cues. 510s from 2002s. 2000gt is a quintessential french riviera sports car. celicas looked like they came straight out of detroit.
nobody intentionally carves their own path. you copy your predecessors until you fail and then if you get enough right to have some staying power the next generation follows suit. im just saying that korea might be to japan what japan was to the previous dominant car manufacturers. i think its too early to tell so lets not count them out
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing
Toyota really started to run with Lean after WWII during Reconstruction. It was actually taught to them by an American. It's nothing new, but it's how they go about it, constantly trying to drive out waste. You have to remember Toyota has been doing it a long time and have made their manufacturing process very efficient. When you intitally implement Lean you don't see many improvements but over time you'll see marked improvements. It can be applied to anything, but the way you go about it in a Hospital is different than building Cars.
The recalls have literally nothing to do with Lean. It had to do with Toyota's climb to be #1 in the world. Their quality slipped because they weren't keeping an Eye on their suppliers like they should have.
Dude... you can find cues from any car and relate them to almost any other car. OEM's are always chasing the next big thing and sometimes that means copying each other. You'll find that the American Big 3 have been stealing the Asian style for the last 10 years. European OEM's have been straddling their own style with the Asian style too.
As for "nobody intentionally carves their own path." that is complete and utter bullshit. All great leaders carve their own path. What about the people who invent new things? Who are they following and failing? Microsoft? Google? Apple? Sir Isac Newton? Eisenstein? I mean the list goes on and on. These aren't people who just copied what other did and failed and tried again. They innovated and became leaders. They found new ways and invented new things all together.
You gotta remember there's some companies that have dominated their respected markets for hundreds years. They don't roll over every few years. Sure the Korean Auto Manufacturers might take over, but I don't see it happening. The Japanese know what a threat the Koreans are. They aren't going to make the mistake the Big 3 did in discounting the threat of the Japanese. They also didn't keep up with the times. The Japanese have been innovators and done a pretty good job of predicting where markets are headed. Sure they make mistakes, but you look at the number of Bombs the big 3 have dropped compared to Toyota and Acura.