Toyota Under Fire: Lessons for Turning Crisis Into Opportunity

by Jeffrey K. Liker, Timothy N. Ogden

The definitive inside account of Toyota's greatest crisis—and lessons you can apply to your own company

"Those who write off Toyota in the current climate of second guessing and speculation are making a profound mistake and need to read this book to get the facts. Toyota is a company that will channel the current challenges to push themselves to even more relentless continuous improvement."
—Charles Baker, former Chief Engineer and Vice President for R&D, Honda of America

"Toyota Under Fire is a superb book and should prove very helpful to American industry's understanding of the problems faced and how any company can prevent similar occurrences in the future."
—Norman Bodek, author, founder of Productivity Press, and inductee in 2010 Industry Week Manufacturing Hall of Fame

"As a former automotive supplier executive and student of Toyota, I was concerned to see the many negative reports and investigations into the quality and safety of its vehicles. Toyota Under Fire tells the story of how this great company is growing wiser and stronger by living its culture and values."
—Michael Fisher, CEO, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center

"Just as Toyota has put itself through excruciating soul-searching in order to understand what went wrong, so should we all take advantage of the opportunity for learning presented to us by Toyota's misfortune. In these pages, you will find that the actual circumstances were far more complex, nuanced, and uncertain than you saw reported in the news."
—John Y. Shook, Chairman and CEO, Lean Enterprise Institute

"The most comprehensive and detailed review to date of the circumstances that led to the crisis, and the events and contexts that caused it to escalate.”
—Strategy & Business

About the Book

For decades, Toyota has been setting standards that are the envy—and goal—of organizations worldwide. Its legendary management principles and business philosophy, first documented by Jeffrey K. Liker in his influential book The Toyota Way, changed the business world's approach to operational excellence.

Granted unprecedented access to Toyota's facilities worldwide, Liker, along with Timothy N. Ogden, investigated the inside story of how Toyota faced the challenges of the recession and the recall crisis of 2009–2010. In both cases, the company was caught off guard—and found that a root cause of the challenges it faced was its failure to live up to its own principles. But the fundamentals were still there, and the company has ultimately come out of the most challenging years of its postwar existence even stronger than before.

Toyota Under Fire chronicles all the events of the recession and the recall crisis in detail, providing valuable lessons any business leader can use to survive and thrive in a crisis, no matter how large:

Crisis response must start by building a strong culture long before the crisis hits. Culture matters far more than decisions made by top executives. Investing in people, even in the depths of a recession, is the surest path to long-term profitability.

Because it had founded its culture on such principles, Toyota didn’t need to amass an army of public relations, marketing, and legal experts to "put out the fire"; instead, it redoubled efforts to live up to its founding tenet, going "back to basics.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Business Leadership, Management

283 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 18, 2011

About the author

Dr. Jeffrey K. Liker is Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan and principle of Optiprise, Inc. Dr. Liker has authored or co-authored over 75 articles and book chapters and nine books. He is author of the international best-seller, The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer, McGraw-Hill, 2004 which speaks to the underlying philosophy and principles that drive Toyota's quality and efficiency-obsessed culture. The companion (with David Meier) The Toyota Way Fieldbook, McGraw Hill, 2005 details how companies can learn from the Toyota Way principles. His book with Jim Morgan, The Toyota Product Development System, Productivity Press, 2006, is the first that details the product development side of Toyota. He is doing a series of books focused on each of the 4Ps. The first books are (with David Meier), Toyota Talent: Developing exceptional people the Toyota Way (May, 2007) and (with Michael Hoseus) Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way (January, 2008). His articles and books have won eight Shingo Prizes for Research Excellence and The Toyota Way also won the 2005 Institute of Industrial Engineers Book of the Year Award and 2007 Sloan Industry Studies Book of the Year. He is a frequent keynote speaker and consultant. Recent clients include Hertz, Caterpillar, AMD, Android, Areva, Rio Tinto Mining, Tenneco Automotive, Jacksonville Naval Air Depot, US Airforce Material Command, Johnson Controls, Harley Davidson, Eaton, and Fujitsu Technical Services.

Source: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~liker

Reviews

[Lisa Vegan · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, so hard for me to rate this one!

So, I asked for a freebee copy of this book, thinking it would be my cup of tea, but it wasn’t, but it’s not the book’s fault. I am feeling guilty about how blah I feel about this book, and I realize that I have to be more careful about books I request in the future.

I have a Prius and before that I had 2 Corollas, all three Toyota cars, all my cars since 1984, and when I saw this book as one of the books being offered by “PTA’s Reviewer Rewards” (I’ve gotten other books from them too!) I was interested, or better put: I thought I’d be interested.

I think I’d have liked this more had I read The Toyota Way before I read this book; until I started reading this book, I hadn’t known of that book.

But, this isn’t the greatest book for happy Toyota owners, at least not as far as I’m concerned. I’d recommend it highly to those working in personnel, managers, business owners, and organizational psychologists. None are fields in which I have any interest, unfortunately.

As far as how pleasurable this was for me to read, I’d give it two stars; it was just okay. But, that’s also partly because I was in the mood to read my novel and other fiction, but I got this book for free and felt obligated to read and review it as soon as possible after receiving it, but, even if I’d waited until I was as enthusiastic as I was when I requested a copy, it just wasn’t for me. But, I can’t give it less than 3 stars. For some I’m sure it will be a 4 or 5 star book. It is well organized, well written, has a useful layout with interesting extra boxes/information, and it could be a useful book for those in business or for any other “right” reader. It’s a useful “how to” book: how to run a company, how to be a boss, how to give stellar customer service, etc. etc.

For me it read as one long advertisement for Toyota or one very long news piece a la a 60 Minutes segment, which I can’t say I enjoyed, especially since I’d seen some of these stories on the news already; there wasn’t too much in here I didn’t know, at some level. Even though I’m impressed with the corporation, I also felt irritated at times by all the praise and hoopla about Toyota that is this book. There is a lot of history about Toyota as a company and much about current events, some very current, as pertains to the company.

The philosophy is interesting but I’d have been more interested reading an article on the subject rather than taking my time to read an entire book. For some, the philosophy might feel very profound and be very useful.

Contents:

Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
One: The Most Admired Company in the World
Two: The Oil Crisis and the Great Recession
Three: The Recall Crisis
Four: Response and the Road to Recovery
Five: Lessons
Index

If you think you’d like this book, and you’d review it on Goodreads, and you’re willing to pay for shipping, I’d be happy to mail you my copy. I wrote my name in it, but otherwise it’s in excellent shape. Just pm me and let me know if you want it and, if you’re the first member to request it, the book is yours.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting engineering and business review of the Toyota "unintended acceleration" issues.

Good background on how the Toyota values and TPS helped the company pull through the crisis. Interesting commentary on how the issues got so blown out of proportion save why Toyota still took the blame due to the culture of the company.

[Jonathan McGuire · Rating 4 out of 5]

What happens when the global benchmark quality and lean company finds itself immersed in a quality crisis? This book is an almost novel like answer.

[Ronnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book

[Tejas · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s all right. I didn’t learn a ton apart from the fact that preparation for a crisis comes from habits developed before the crisis.

[Bob Schatz]

I use a lot of examples from Toyota's quality culture in my training and coaching. During their crisis, many students made wise cracks about not using them as an example, but a little knowledge and deeper digging uncovered the real story. Toyota is an amazing company and this book will help you understand why. Seeing what a company culture like this can do in a crisis is impressive.

[Hashim Al-Zain · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is without a shadow of doubt a testament that Toyota is truly a continuously improving company built on it's unique culture that helped save the company from an immanent disaster; the likes of what GM, Ford, and Chrysler experienced during the 2008-2009 meltdown!

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great example of a case study of crisis turned into opportunity. While strongly slanted towards Toyota, it gives great insight into the Toyota Way and what lessons can be adapted by other organizations. Warning, it will make you love Toyota!

[Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compared to Liker's earlier books on Toyota, Under Fire is smaller, and follows more of a story telling format.

Mark Graban interviewed Liker, back in February 2011.
http://www.leanblog.org/2011/02/podca...

[Jason Gould · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has great insight into how one can turn crisis into opportunity. Although I found most of the book to be quite repetitive I still gained personally from reading this book. I look forward to reading The Toyota Way: 14 Managerial Practices by the World's Greatest Manufacture.

[Hunter Johnson]

Left my copy in a hotel room, so currently abandoned

[Theodore Kinni · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thoroughly researched view of Toyota's recent troubles with recession and recalls by the leading U.S. academic expert on the company