One other problem with the book is the authors’ insistence on using Japanese terms to express concepts with perfectly legitimate English equivalents. For example, an obeya (‘‘big room’’) is a dedicated project room for a team that contains the team’s information about the process. In the United States, these are often called war rooms or team rooms. These rooms provide the team with shared workspace for meetings. Over the course of the project, the team covers the walls with visual displays of project information, including the team’s goals and objectives, metrics, schedule, sketches, drawings, and technical data. The space accelerates team decision making since the critical information that they need is consolidated in one highly visible location. It improves collaboration by providing a space for team members to work side by side. Visual planning techniques reduce the effort required to track project status and schedule. Toyota has evolved this practice in new directions, but not so far that the English terms no longer apply. The authors’ continued use of Japanese contributes to the common misperception that Toyota’s systems are rooted in the Japanese culture and therefore cannot be implemented successfully outside of Japan. In reality, the authors describe how Toyota successfully transplanted these practices to its development centers outside of Japan, using English-speaking Japanese mentors to build competency in the Toyota development system in American and European engineers. The entire book also assumes a familiarity with auto industry terms such as body in white that create unnecessary barriers for those in other industries. The authors could have included either a short introduction to automotive development or at least a glossary of auto industry terms to help their readers translate these ideas beyond the auto industry. A reader who is unfamiliar with the typical development life cycle for a new car model would sometimes have difficulty seeing just how far ahead Toyota is compared to its peers. Despite these problems, this is the essential reference book for any company interested in lean product development as it is practiced at Toyota, the pioneering lean company. The authors have made every effort to create an accurate description of the Toyota development system that can serve as a reference for creating product development systems that deliver high performance in other companies and other industries. Every industry and every company will have to develop an interpretation of the Toyota development system that will work within its own environment.
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