Quotes in improvement
Stamping out fires is a lot of fun, but it is only putting things back the way they were.
A good deal of the corporate planning I have observed is like a ritual rain dance; it has no effect on the weather that follows, but those who engage in it think it does. Moreover, it seems to me that much of the advice and instruction related to corporate planning is directed at improving the dancing, not the weather.
Once you get some data it does away with a lot of arguments and people can work as a team going after the biggest problems.
Toyota's real achievement is not merely the creation and use of the tools themselves; it is in making all its work a series of nested, ongoing experiments, be the work as routine as installing seats in cars or as complex, idiosyncratic, and large scale as designing and launching a new model or factory.
Your purpose is to identify where in the process things go wrong, not who messed up. Look for systemic causes, not culprits.
Improvement of Quality and Productivity, to be successful in any company, must be a learning process, year by year, top management leading the whole company.
Every day that we spent not improving our products was a wasted day.
Does the customer invent new product or service? The customer generates nothing. No customer asked for electric lights. There was gas and gas mantles, which gave good light. The first electric lights had carbon filaments. They were fragile and inefficient. No customer asked for photography. No customer asked for the telegraph, nor for a telephone. No customer asked for an automobile. We have horses: what could be better? No customer asked for pneumatic tires. Tires are made of rubber. It is silly to think of riding on air. The first pneumatic tires in the United States were not good. The user had to carry with him rubber cement, plugs, and a pump, and know how to use them.