[lemax]

"The Machine That Changed the World" is a wonderful title on this. Kiichiro Toyoda invented the lean production model after coming to the states and studying the inefficiencies of the assembly lines of Ford. This was a process dependent on modularizing every manufacturing component due to a demand for the Toyota company to serve a market with a need for an immense variety of vehicles, and giving teams ownership of the entire production process rather than one error check at the end a lá Ford. Introducing a vehicle with a steering wheel on the opposite side might take a year to implement in lean production, while handling that kind of variation in the assembly line model could take years (generally double the amount of time); The net result of this being that Toyota could offer 2x the vehicles of GM at half GM's size. Toyota was able to make extremely reliable vehicles and modify them as consumer demands shifted. By 1990, the Japanese were making cars with 4 year product lives and 500k total units (125k per year) while the Western companies were building 2M over 10 year product lives.

[throw0101a]

> Kiichiro Toyoda invented the lean production model after coming to the states and studying the inefficiencies of the assembly lines of Ford.

See also Deming on quality control:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Work_in_Japa...

[hinkley]

As I’ve heard it, Deming was having trouble getting people to listen to him on this side of the pond, but the Japanese were all too happy to listen to his ideas.

There also seems to be a running disagreement about whether Mr Toyoda or Taiichi Ohno is responsible for the Toyota system.

To wit, the intro to Ohno’s Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiichi_Ohno

[throw0101a]

> As I’ve heard it, Deming was having trouble getting people to listen to him

Ben Rockwood, then at Joyent, gave the keynote at LISA '11 on DevOps that touches on Deming and quality (45m45s):

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KpPBnEtRj4

[mbubb]

> As I’ve heard it, Deming was having trouble getting people to listen to him

made me chuckle - its not like he did anything of value...

Deming has always been a reminder to think about counter tendencies. He might not have made sense to the Detroit execs in 1950-1975 but his relevance changed sharply after that.

[windexh8er]

Deming didn't do "anything of value"? Considering Kaizen and the concept of continuous improvement in Japan is mostly attributed to him. The prime minister awarded him the Order of the Sacred Treasure and recognizes him for their post-war rebirth as an industrial power. Detroit did everything wrong at the time (see GM's disaster in automation at their Hamtramck facility [0]). Even when American execs were posed with a simple question of why their own employees didn't buy their product they didn't understand the disconnect between quality, reliability and the awareness of the buyer.

[0] https://www.leanblog.org/2016/06/gms-ceo-roger-smith-thought...

[TotempaaltJ]

I think gp was being sarcastic...

[windexh8er]

Probably, although I feel as though that perspective about Deming is, unfortunately, a reality for some.

[oblio]

> Even when American execs were posed with a simple question of why their own employees didn't buy their product they didn't understand the disconnect between quality, reliability and the awareness of the buyer.

That's hilarious. Do you have a source for it?

[mbubb]

yeah 100% joking Deming was an amazing human being. He was a key figure in WWII military supply logistics, too

[nradov]

Ironically Toyota now has longer product lives than many other mainstream manufacturers. The Camry and Corolla are on roughly 6 year product lifecycles. The 4Runner has barely changed in 10 years.

[smush]

> The 4Runner has barely changed in 10 years.

To be fair, that may be a purposeful design decision.

I consider the fact that the 4Runner can trace its way back to a 1980s Hilux that Top Gear dropped off a building (and still survived) to be nothing but good for its likely reliability.

Similarly, its primarily dial-based dashboard (as opposed to the touch-screen everywhere fad right now), truck-based suspension, and off-road performance (all things that could point to it being a rather much for a city car) to be its primary selling points.

Additionally, why change what sells so well? They sell ~140,000 4Runners a year, vs all of the Lexus models combined being ~40,000.

I can't comment on the Camry/Corolla as I've never owned one.

[eldenbishop]

Kind of related: Their Land Cruiser is specifically designed for a 25 year service life and is thus very conservative, changing slowly if at.

[jdkee]

That's incorrect by an order of magnitude. Lexus sells in excess of half a million cars per year.

[smush]

I stand corrected.

Having performed some cursory 'research' I found that in the USA in 2018, according to https://www.best-selling-cars.com/brands/2018-full-year-usa-...

All Lexus vehicles combined sold 92,660 units versus the 4Runner model which sold 139,694 units.

A difference of 47,000 units, or roughly, the 2018 US sales for the Lexus ES

[quicklyfrozen]

92,660 is the total for Lexus cars, not vehicles; total Lexus US sales from that chart is 298,310.

[pixelbash]

At a guess the USA is not the primary market for Lexus.

[tastygreenapple]

America is 100% the primary market for Lexus.

The first Lexus car ever was unveiled in the 1989 Detroit Auto Show, Toyota's first non-Japanese Lexus plant was in North America. In fact, Toyota stopped selling top-of-the-line cars after Lexus launched, they discontinued the Cressida and stretched the Camry into the Avalon just to have a full-sized Toyota in America.

Toyota didn't even sell Lexus cars in Japan until ~2006, the American Lexus vehicles were badged as Toyotas (e.g The LS400/LS430 was the 'Celsior'). Additionally, Japanese luxury tastes are different than American tastes - the Japanese Toyota Celsiors were available with a premium cloth interior and without sunroofs (which came standard on many American Lexus cars).

Now, Lexus may sell more in the Middle East than North America (by revenue if not units) but America was 100% the target market.

[chubbyrabbit]

There's a joke that Lexus stands for Let's Export to the US.

[abawany]

The Top Gear reference is powerful but in my opinion, meaningless. All it has done is coin the legend of the invincible Hilux. However, I did not see them or anyone try similar tricks with trucks of similar vintage, making this just a show trick.

[majormajor]

> The Top Gear reference is powerful but in my opinion, meaningless. All it has done is coin the legend of the invincible Hilux. However, I did not see them or anyone try similar tricks with trucks of similar vintage, making this just a show trick.

The reputation existed before the show, that's where they got the idea.

[abawany]

I understand, but no one has referenced the less-shiny, real world, imperfect experience in this thread; they have quoted the shiny and superficial Top Gear shtick, which I must admit was the first time I started to develop a considerable distaste for that show. Their attempt has introduced an unfair halo effect for Toyota that has deflected from their more relevant and modern day failings.

[rayiner]

Yeah I pretty much don’t need my 4Runner to have touch controls.

[bluedino]

Lexus sells over 100,000 RX SUV’s a year alone. Toyota sells its twin, the Highlander, at over 200,000 units each of the last three years.

They also don’t change it very often.

[karthikb]

> The 4Runner has barely changed in 10 years.

Which makes a lot of sense when you consider how and where it's used. It's easier to have service and repair infrastructure for one car with identical mechanicals over a decade than 3 or 4.

[wyclif]

Honda makes cars. Toyota makes appliances for people who hate driving.

[Arbalest]

With a couple of exceptions in the enthusiast sector, where they are well regarded. Or at least they did at one point. I am of course thinking of the cars with the 1JZ and 2JZ engines. I have an inkling that my heuristic might also correlate with Yamaha input, but on that I'm not certain (not knowing the whole engine lineup)

[wyclif]

This is also why the Toyota Hilux is the vehicle of choice for ISIS: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-isis-uses-toyota-trucks-...

[sitkack]

It would be the vehicle of choice for any army with a comptroller.

[bigiain]

And Tesla make huge smartphones with seats and wheels.

[kazinator]

Nope; both are like that now. They used to make fun cars for people who love driving. Honda held out some five to ten years longer than Toyota, that's all.

[wyclif]

I'm curious why you say that. Seems to me that the two companies are still quite different in that regard culturally.

[shostack]

The Supra would like to disagree with you.

[wyclif]

Actually, I agree with you. The Supra seems to be an exception to the rule with regard to Toyota culture. It's fascinating and I'd like to test drive one.

[Sherl]

The fact is each line setup would involve several modifications in supply chain. Processes, Assembly, Paint Shop and not to say the engineering required beneath it. Reliability engineering often takes six months to an year to emulate a decade worth of conditions. You don't want to rush something to market and break it and apparently cars are hazardous if it fails in operation which mayn't be applicable to mobile phones.

[vram22]

>The Camry and Corolla

Saw this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Camry#Etymology

[marcosdumay]

Just because you can, it does not mean that you should.

Toyota cars are very successful, I don't know how do they react to a market change because AFAIK, they recently didn't have to.

[sitkack]

If they made a 1989 Toyota Corolla All-Trac, today using the same tech, I'd buy it for 30k.

[samirm]

why is that ironic?

[sebtoast]

I've never seen Toyoda mentioned as the inventor of the lean model, I usually seen Taiichi Ohno credited for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiichi_Ohno

[vvanders]

W. Deming also played a pretty large role too[1]. The whole history around Lean/Kaizen/etc is pretty fascinating.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

[throw0101a]

Deming was about quality control, which dovetails into lean: you can only do the latter if you know your parts bin is good, and that you can trust your supplier/s to deliver.

[ethbro]

In that sense, lean is essentially the same solution as reducing buffer size to increase network throughout.

Excess capacity pooling decreases stopages but prevents signalling of problems back through the chain.

[vram22]

Do you have some links for the history? I'm interested in Lean and Kaizen. Made a comment about it in this thread.

[vvanders]

It's covered a little in the TAL episode on NUMMI[1]. There's also a bit of it involved with TWI[2][3]. I'd read some other interesting things about skill transfer post-WW2 with the Marshall Plan but having trouble finding the original source material.

[1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/403/nummi-2010

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Training_Within_Industry#Post_...

[3] https://twi-institute.org/training-within-industry/history/

[vram22]

This part from your link [2] is interesting:

>In the Foreword to Dinero's book "Training Within Industry", John Shook relates a story in which a Toyota trainer brought out an old copy of a TWI service manual to prove to him that American workers at NUMMI could be taught using the "Japanese" methods used at Toyota. Thus, TWI was the forerunner of what is today regarded as a Japanese creation.

[vram22]

Great, will check those links out, thank you.

[vram22]

Can't confirm or the reverse, but I do remember Taiichi Ohno's name being mentioned multiple times in the book (The Toyota Way), which I bought and read some years ago. Interesting book.

One of the things mentioned was the concepts of muri and muda, related to (not) wasting (stuff), IIRC [1]. Related to Kaizen [2].

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=japanese+word+muri+and+muda&

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muri_(Japanese_term)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muda_(Japanese_term)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mura_(Japanese_term)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen

[jopsen]

Interesting point about iteration speed.

I suppose today Tesla with their over-the-air updates is redefining product dev-cycles..