Toyota – Page 2 – AllAboutLean.com

The Toyota KPI Dashboard—Human Resources

October 31, 2025October 31, 2023 by Christoph Roser

With the KPI groups safety, quality, productivity, and cost, this series on the Toyota KPI dashboard has covered the main topics. However, there is more. Not always but often you can also find a section on human resources (HR) development. Yet, these are usually not KPI, but more organizational topics that may be part of the daily shop floor meeting. Below are some examples of how this section could look, although this may vary quite a bit among different Toyota plants. Let’s have a look:

The Toyota KPI Dashboard—Cost

October 31, 2025October 24, 2023 by Christoph Roser

In my series on the Toyota KPI dashboard, after safety, quality, and productivity, we finally arrive at cost. While for some companies it is the number one factor, for Toyota it is far behind safety, quality, and productivity. The argument is that if safety, quality, and productivity are in line, it is likely that cost is also good. Both a lack of quality and a lack of productivity will drive up the cost.

The Toyota KPI Dashboard—Productivity

October 31, 2025October 17, 2023 by Christoph Roser

This post in my series on the Toyota KPI dashboard looks at productivity. After safety and quality, this is the third-most-important KPI group on the Toyota dashboard. The cost is least important. This section of the dashboard measures different KPIs on the productive output of the system. Let’s have a look.

The Toyota KPI Dashboard—Safety

August 21, 2025October 3, 2023 by Christoph Roser

In my last post I showed you an overview of the Toyota KPI dashboard. This time I will look in more detail at the first (and arguably most important) section on safety. And, while I’m at it, let me also tell you some more about safety at Toyota.

The Toyota KPI Dashboard—Overview

August 21, 2025September 26, 2023 by Christoph Roser

Dashboards, in their many forms, are essential to track the performance of a production system. In this post I will talk more about the Toyota shop floor dashboard. A lot of the information is from Toyota in Japan, but the images are from Toyota UK. Keep in mind that the dashboards are not a rigid standard and there may be differences in how they are implemented in the different plants. For one thing, in Japan they are in Japanese, and in the UK in English, but there are also differences within the KPI itself. Let me tell you more in this short series on the Toyota KPI dashboards…

The Soft Power of the Toyota Production System—Yokoten, Nemawashi, and More

August 21, 2025August 8, 2023 by Christoph Roser

When we are talking about lean manufacturing, we often focus on the tools like kanban, 5S, SMED, and many more. Sometimes, but harder to grasp, is the underlying culture and philosophy of continuous improvement and PDCA. Part of this culture is what you could call the soft power of the Toyota Production System. This is a form of decision making in contrast with the “hard power” more common in Western companies. Let’s have a look:

Flexible Multi-Model Assembly Line at Toyota

August 21, 2025June 13, 2023 by Christoph Roser

The flexible assembly line at Toyota is a well-known manufacturing approach. Such a flexibility gives Toyota the ability to produce different models in almost any sequence. These lines were already common at Toyota around 1990, and by now they are found at many car makers. Time to take a look at how it is done and why it is good.

The Difference between the Toyota Production System and Lean Manufacturing

August 21, 2025May 23, 2023 by Christoph Roser

The Toyota Production System (TPS) is the archetype of lean manufacturing. Lean is often used as a synonym for the Toyota Production System, and that is generally quite accurate. It is also sometimes referred to as the “Westernized” version of the Toyota Production System. However, there are some smaller differences in the underlying approach, as well as some larger and often unintentional differences in its application. Let’s have a look!