Jeffrey K. Liker author photo
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Jeffrey K. Liker

Jeffrey K. Liker is an American industrial engineering scholar and consultant best known for applying Toyota Production System principles to management and product development. A University of Michigan professor emeritus, he wrote The Toyota Way and related books, helping popularize lean manufacturing worldwide; The Toyota Way received the Shingo Prize.

Biografía y Trayectoria del Autor

Jeffrey K. Liker built an unusual foundation for a management writer. He earned a B.S. in industrial engineering from Northeastern University in 1979 and later completed a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Massachusetts in 1989. That combination of technical systems thinking and close attention to human behavior became the signature of his later work. By his own account, a decisive turning point came when he recognized that, after years in industrial engineering, his deeper interest was social psychology; graduate study in sociology gave him the research training, theoretical grounding, and academic writing discipline that launched his career. ((https://liker.engin.umich.edu/education/))

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Toyota realized that lean is a sociotechnical system driven by people
-Can You Assess Your Way to Lean?
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Toyota grows its leaders from within to live and breathe the culture
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Pursuing hoshin kanri is a never-ending process of learning and getting better
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But through Toyota Kata, they eventually discovered the value of rapid experimentation
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Standardized work can be an ugly thing in the hands of control-oriented bureaucrats and a beautiful thing when it enables creativity and continuous improvement
-Standardized Work is a Goal To Work Toward, Not a Tool to Implement
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The Toyota Way starts with a collective clarity of purpose and core values that guide the overall enterprise
-How the Toyota Way and Toyota Kata Fit Together

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"Feels effortless compared to reading. I’ve finished 6 books this month already."

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