Toyota's Approach to Developing and Coaching Leaders

<p>When <strong>Taiichi Ohno</strong> the architect of the <strong>Toyota Production System (TPS)</strong> first developed the system he hesitated to document it fearing that people would focus only on the tools and techniques rather than the underlying philosophy. Eventually he described TPS as a <strong>house</strong>-a system where every element supports the others. Remove any support and the roof along with everything connected to it will collapse. One of Ohno's students argued that the system should have been called the <strong>Thinking Production System</strong> instead because its true purpose is to <strong>encourage people to think learn and continuously improve</strong>. In TPS <strong>people are the most important component</strong> and their thinking drives the system's success.</p>