Elegant Solutions

Introduction

This books talks about the success story of Toyota, the automobile giant, and provides useful insights into the functioning of an ideal organization on the whole. The automobile industry had strong players long before Toyota came in to the picture. They entered as K-generalists in the American market. But now, they are the market leaders worldwide. As gathered from the book, this has been made possible by a highly structured and systematic culture that is also the hotbed of creativity. This book is different from the numerous other books on Toyota's success as it brings to light the human-centered creative process behind the visible success.

Background

Building on a rigorously schematized yet internally flexible set of operating principles grounded in a 1898 invention by founder Sakichi Toyoda - an automated loom that would shut itself down the instant a single thread snapped - this was the beginning of the Toyota Industries.

Toyota was founded in 1930 by Kiichiro Toyoda as a spin off from his father's Toyota Industries to create automobiles. It produced its first passenger car in 1936 and since then it has never looked back. In the first half of 2007, it sold 4.72 million vehicles and overtook GM as the world's bestselling car manufacturer. Its premier brands are Lexus