U-M professor’s top-selling book focuses on Toyota’s methods

ANN ARBOR—University of Michigan professor Jeffrey Liker’s book, “The
Toyota Way,” has become a surprise top-seller in the business management
book category and is being translated into six languages just three months
after its January release.

In his book, Liker, a nationally recognized expert in lean manufacturing,
outlines the 14 principles of lean manufacturing that comprise the Toyota methods
of lean production, and talks about why most companies haven’t caught on.

Liker’s book contends most companies fall short of implementing true lean
principals because they focus on short term gains through the so-called surface
tools of lean, such as creating cells, and do not create a true lean culture.
Critical to the lean system are developing people and partners, but many companies
fail here. For example, the Big Three automakers struggle with labor issues
and continuously squeeze suppliers to make short term revenue gains, he says.

“Toyota will invest $5 today with the belief that they will get $100
in two years,” Liker said, illustrating Toyota’s long-term visionary approach. “American
companies won’t do that unless I can show them today, in extraordinary detail,
how they will get $10.”

The management principals in “The Toyota Way” may be applied to
any business, large or small. That is why publisher McGraw-Hill Trade believes
the book is popular.

“He has really broken into something above and beyond the academic market,” said
Mary Glenn, executive editor, McGraw-Hill Trade. “Companies and business
people are looking for success stories and in an economy like today, success
stories are few and far between.”

Liker has studied Toyota for more than 20 years, and the book contains dozens
of anecdotes on the company’s successful methods, and interviews with Toyota
executives and employees.

Liker, a professor of industrial and operations engineering, is the director
of the Japan Technology Management Program (JTMP) and co-director of the lean
manufacturing program at the University of Michigan.

For more about Liker, visit: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~liker/.

Contact him at