The Toyota Way – a quantitative approach

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to quantify Toyota's managerial values known as the Toyota Way to understand the cultural aspects of the Toyota production system (TPS).Design/methodology/approachThe research methodology in this paper utilizes latent semantic analysis and singular value decomposition to analyze corporate memory documents to determine from organizational view how TPS is prescribed ideally to achieve Toyota's culture.FindingsThis work shows that the Toyota Way heavily centers on the principle ofGenchi Genbutsuwhich is the practice of seeing problems first hand. Findings also show that Toyota's widely popularizedKaizenphilosophy is de‐emphasized compared to team work and respect for people. Toyota's culture is somewhat balanced between individualism and collectivism which disagrees with most national Asian cultures. Finally, results show that Toyota reinforces both long‐ and short‐term orientations which disagree with most national views of Japan's national culture.Research limitations/implicationsFuture work using latent semantic analysis should include a broader spectrum of literature on which to perform the analysis. This analysis is limited to developing theories about Toyota's culture but does not actually describe the culture that exist in the workplace.Practical implicationsThis work provides a broad guideline with which to structure a lean culture. It provides the reader with knowledge of what parts of a corporate culture to deem the most significant. Improving upon each of these company values with the weighted significance elicited in this document could provide a positive impact within an organization.Originality/valueThe methodology used in this paper is a brand new, fledgling technique that could provide significant improvements in studying lean cultures. The concepts of this technique will be useful to researchers in this field and the results will be of value to management who wish to create a more efficient organization.