Speaker: The Toyota way puts employees first

Toyota hasn’t had any layoffs, anywhere in the world, since the 1950s, and people attending the National Coalition of Advanced Technology Centers workshop on Friday found out how this was possible.

Michael Hoseus, former Toyota manager and current executive director of the Center for Quality People and Organizations Inc. (a Toyota-sponsored nonprofit organization), spoke at a luncheon held Friday at the Goodyear Lake House.

The luncheon was followed by a four-hour seminar at Danville Community College’s Regional Center for Advanced Technology and Training.

Hoseus said Toyota plants hire two shifts of workers, scheduled for five days a week. They are trained not only in the technological aspects of their jobs, but in the Toyota mindset that stresses mutual trust between the company and its people.

During full-production periods, when the plant is running 24-7, employees work incredible amounts of overtime — and during slow times, they all know they will still get their paychecks.

“As far as I know, Toyota is the only company that does this,” Hoseus said.

Other signs of the company’s relationship with its employees is visible on its Georgetown, Ky., plant’s Web site, which has news about scholarships awarded to employees’ children, along with kudos to staff members with perfect attendance — 14 of whom were just given free cars.

Hoseus said during slow times, all employees work on becoming more efficient, brainstorming ways to out-do their competition (they’ll bring in competitors cars and tear them apart, looking for ways to improve their own vehicles), and all become actively involved in seeking ways to save the company money.

At Toyota, Hoseus said, all ideas for improvement are taken seriously, whether those ideas come from assembly-line workers, management or the CEO.

It all comes down to “kaizen,” the Japanese word for improvement that has become its own philosophy focused on consistent and constant improvement, he said. In the business world, that means working toward improvements in every area.

Kaizen also means eliminating waste of any kind, often called “lean manufacturing,” Hoseus said.

He talked about a time he was managing an area at Toyota, and spent two years making its functions virtually perfect. As a result, one of his team members was transferred to another project, thereby giving him something to work on again — achieving that same “perfection” with a smaller staff.

Toyota has called the whole process of kaizen and lean manufacturing the Toyota Production System (TPS) for many years, but now it’s referred to as the Thinking Production System.

Finding employees who fit into Toyota’s mindset has been a problem, Hoseus said, and its nonprofit organization was developed to overcome those problems by working with the community and educators to train people to be the kind of employees Toyota wants: flexible people with a teamwork attitude and problem-solving skills.

• Contact Denice Thibodeau at dthibodeau@registerbee.com or (434) 791-7985.