Masterclass Isao Yoshino – travel back to lean management roots

Isao Yoshino

A Toyota leader:

Isao Yoshino is a 40-year Toyota leader (of which 14 years in the US) and a former NUMMI training manager based at Toyota HQs in Japan. In 1979 and 1980, he was in charge of the Manager-Development Program (“Kan-Pro” in Japanese) for all the managers at Toyota HQs. In 1983, he was assigned to the manager of a newly-established training section for NUMMI’s shop floor leaders. He hired John Shook (author of Managing to Learn, co-author of Learning to See) from outside and other staff members from within, to develop a hands-on training program for American shop floor group/team leaders who travelled from Fremont, California.

In June 1984, Isao Yoshino and his team started training American shop floor leaders for three weeks at Toyota plant. He has also worked in Research, Corporate Planning and Production Control.

The masterclass theme:

Isao Yoshino will lead you through a too-rare-to-be-missed exchange on how Toyota managed the NUMMI[1] joint venture with GM in the 80’s (training of the American workers, Team leaders’ roles, Kaizen activities, Management…). The exchange will be based on a 1h15 film made by Japanese TV NHK on the subject, and which has recently been released with English subtitles. He will also discuss the specificities of Toyota management and take you through the process of Hoshin Kanri as it started in Toyota.

Masterclass I. Yoshino March 26,2019

Cette journée se déroulera en Anglais. 

[1] NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc.) : a joint venture established in 1983 between Toyota and GM to manufacture small-sized cars in the US