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The ability to bring new and innovative products to market rapidly is the prime critical competence for any successful consumer-driven company. All industries, especially automotive, are slashing product development lead times in the current hyper-competitive marketplace. This book is the first to thoroughly examine and analyze the truly effective product development methodology that has made Toyota the most forward-thinking company in the automotive industry. In… More >>
The Toyota Product Development System: Integrating People, Process And Technology
read comments (5)
February 19th, 2010 at 2:52 am
Although this book is very popular today, the authors offer no new approaches to new product development. Companies should strive to leapfrog Toyota. Similarly to Demmings’ focus on quality, every aspect of Toyota’s NPD process was first developed in the USA, which still ranks as the World’s leading innovation source.
Rating: 1 / 5
February 19th, 2010 at 5:44 am
Very interesting topics covered. Strongly recommended for engineers in the automotive industry.
Rating: 5 / 5
February 19th, 2010 at 7:51 am
This book is useful for describing the Toyota Way in product development. Toyota uses techniques that are new, compared both to “lean” and to the Toyota Production System. For example, Toyota has layered approaches to managing technological risk, uses checklists to apply lessons learned, and makes their Chief Engineers the Voice Of The Customer. This is great stuff. However, the context of Toyota vehicle development is limited. The authors say (in italics) that most of Toyota Product Development is of derivative product vehicles built on existing product platforms. Further, most platforms are not radically different from prior platforms. The authors do briefly describe the development of the Prius. This adds a great deal to the book, but it still leaves a hole.
Vehicle customers don’t much change their minds during product development. In other words, as long as vehicle development takes, vehicle customer tastes change slower. This is not true in many of the markets that our most successful companies compete in. For techniques to address product development in fast-changing markets, there are two other sources of information: Donald Reinertsen and agile software development. The authors list Reinertsen’s second book, “Managing the Design Factory,” in their bibliography, but I didn’t find other references to him — I suspect the authors learned a great deal from him. Reinertsen now has a third book out that is “must” reading if you are in this kind of market. Second, no industry has done more thinking and experimenting in product development than the software industry, and “agile software techniques” is the umbrella term for such memorable methods as “scrum,” and “extreme programming.” Both Reinertsen and agile are rich in insight and method. I recommend the book, but treat it as background if your market is fast-moving.
Rating: 3 / 5
February 19th, 2010 at 8:16 am
This book breaks down product design with simple suggestions on how to make the process work. I have no doubt that this book describes what the future of product design will look like.
Rating: 5 / 5
February 19th, 2010 at 9:52 am
The rise and global success of Toyota inspired vast numbers of studies, articles and books on the company’s production system and culture. The authors show how the Japanese auto maker’s system for developing products has contributed to its success. James Morgan and Jeffrey Liker explain Toyota’s insistence on starting projects correctly, applying the best resources to them in a timely fashion and terminating wasteful processes that provide no customer benefit. The authors also portray Toyota’s approach to technology, project management tools, communication and corporate culture and compare Toyota to American auto makers. While this book is most useful to those involved in manufacturing product development, especially engineers and their managers, getAbstract recommends it to anyone who is fascinated by the world’s largest automaker and wants to learn about its integrated approach to creating cars.
Rating: 4 / 5