Summary |
This book is the product of 20 years of study of Toyota Much of that work was done under the auspices of the Japan Technology Management Program at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where I am currently Director. This program was started in 1991 with generous funding through the U.S Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), but it really began with the vision of Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico. Senator Bingaman worked behind the scenes to get the funding to support university programs like mine to learn from Japan, send technically oriented students to Japan on internships, and share what we learned with others in the United States. At that time in the late ’80 and early ‘90s, the “learning trade imbalance” was huge-with most of the learning going from the U.S. to Japan and little coming back. There were many reasons for this, but one was that the U.S. did not want to listen. The phenomenal success of companies like Toyota woke us up, and Toyota has contributed greatly to bringing more balance into the exchange of learning.
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