Toyota Way Fieldbook : A Practical Guide for Implementing Toyota's 4Ps

Figure 2-1 represents company purpose as a matrix combining internal and

external goals as they relate to people and business. It includes simple state-

ments based on Toyota’s purpose and shows both the short-term goal and the

longer term purpose of the company.

The short-term goals for each cell are what every company wants: capable

internal processes, capable people who can do the work, capable partners who

can do their jobs, and they want to make money. That’s pretty straightforward.

More challenging is getting a sincere commitment by top management to long-

term thinking. Let’s consider what long-term thinking means in each of the four

cells.

Lean Systems

Let’s keep it simple and start with what most of the world knows best about

Toyota—the technical part of the Toyota Production System. It reduces the time

between a customer order and delivery by eliminating non-value-added waste.

The result is a lean process that delivers high quality to customers at a low cost,

Chapter 2. Define Your Company Purpose and Begin to Live It 19

Figure 2-1. Defining the company purpose

Company

Purpose

Learning Community

ST: Capable People

LT: Learning to Improve

Lean Systems

ST: Capable Processes

LT: Value Stream

Improvement

Learning Enterprise

ST: Capable Partners

LT: Learning Enterprise

Value-Adding Contributor

ST: Profitable

LT: Growth and

Contributing to Society

Key: ST=Short term LT=Long term

Internal External

People

Business