What Does Shusa (主査) Mean?
Shusa (主査) is the original Japanese name for the role now called the Toyota Chief Engineer. The literal meaning, chief examiner, is harder to translate, but it reveals how the role was meant to work.
What Does Shusa (主査) Mean?
Shusa (主査) is the original Japanese name for the role the English-speaking world now calls the Toyota Chief Engineer. The word is harder to translate than “Chief Engineer,” which is part of why the role has carried several names over the years. But the literal meaning of shusa, closer to “chief examiner,” is worth understanding. It says something about how the role was meant to work that the English title does not.
This article explains the names the role has been given, what the characters 主査 mean, and what the position actually is. For the role in full, see the main guide, What Is the Toyota Chief Engineer (Shusa) System?.
What has the role been called?
The role has gone by more than one name, in both Japanese and English, and no single translation ever satisfied everyone.
Inside Toyota since the mid 1950s the original title was 主査 (shusa). Tatsuo Hasegawa, who helped codify the role, wrote the English name differently. On his own handwritten list of principles he titled it 《ChiefDesigner(主査)に関する10ケ條》, putting the English “Chief Designer” right next to the Japanese 主査. When the Harvard researchers Kim Clark and Takahiro Fujimoto studied Toyota’s development system in their 1991 book Product Development Performance, they called the role the “heavyweight product manager,” to mark how much more weight it carried than the more lightweight coordinators common in Western firms.
The name that won, in English, eventually was “Chief Engineer.” It is the term Toyota’s own English-language materials settled on, and it is now standard across the product development literature. Who first chose it, and exactly when, does not appear to be recorded. What is clear is that Toyota adopted it in Japanese too. In August 1989, during an organizational flattening, Toyota formally changed the internal title from 主査 to the katakana チーフエンジニア (chīfu enjinia, Chief Engineer). So “Chief Engineer” is the term in use today, in both languages, and has been for decades.
None of this makes shusa the wrong word or the right one. It is simply the original word. And because it is a real Japanese term with its own meaning, rather than a borrowed English label, it carries information about the role that the later names do not.
What do the characters 主査 mean?
Shusa is two characters. 主 (shu) means chief, main, or primary. 査 (sa) means to investigate, examine, or inspect. Together they mean something close to chief examiner or lead investigator.
The second character is the telling one. 査 is the character of examination and review. It appears in 検査 (kensa, inspection), 調査 (chōsa, investigation or survey), 審査 (shinsa, screening or adjudication), and 監査 (kansa, audit). Every one of those words is about examining work and reaching a judgment on it. None of them is about designing or building. The title names a function of review, not of command or of drafting.
What does the word 主査 imply about the role?
This is where the original word earns its keep. 主査 was not invented at Toyota. It is a common word in Japanese institutions, and it always points the same way.
In a Japanese graduate program for example, a thesis is judged by a committee. That committee has one 主査 and two or more 副査 (fukusa, deputy examiners). The 主査 is the chief examiner. He supervises the whole review and carries final responsibility for the verdict. The 副査 are specialist sub-examiners who supply expert opinion in their fields. The word also names a rank in Japanese government offices, banks, and research bodies, where a 主査 is the person placed in charge of a particular matter who pulls the pieces together and answers for the result.
Read against that ordinary usage, the word fits the Toyota role unusually well, and four things it implies match the position closely:
- An examiner, not a “commander”. The shusa examines and integrates the work of others and signs off on it. He does not design the parts himself.
- A small lead team. A chief examiner is supported by sub-examiners. The Toyota shusa is supported by a small group of assistants called 主査付き (shusa-tsuki), each covering a function he does not come from. One lead over a few specialists.
- Limited formal command authority. A committee chair does not employ the other examiners. The shusa, likewise, has little line authority over the engineers. He owns the verdict, not the people.
- A high and responsible position. The 主査 is the senior figure who answers for the outcome. The role sits high and carries the final responsibility for the whole.
Whether or not Toyota picked the word for these reasons, it lands on a term that already meant exactly this kind of role.
What is the shusa, then?
In plain terms, the shusa, or Chief Engineer, is a veteran engineer put in charge of an entire vehicle program, from the first concept through to production launch. He is responsible for what the car is, who it is for, what it costs, and whether it sells.
He does not directly manage the engineers who design the car. They report through their own functional departments. He sits outside that line. His main control lever is ultimately approval. Historically, every engineering drawing for the vehicle needed his signature before it was authorized, which gave a staff position a veto over what the line engineers produced. Beyond that, he leads by technical competence and persuasion rather than by giving orders. The detail of why the role works that way is covered in Why Does Toyota’s Chief Engineer Have No Authority?, and the full account of the system is in the main guide.
The English title puts the weight on “engineer,” which fits the technical depth the job demands. The original 主査 puts the weight on examination and integration. Both describe the same role. Knowing the older word simply adds a layer the English name leaves out.
This article draws on the Akihiro Wada Oral History (2008), a Japanese-language primary source, the general use of 主査 and 副査 in Japanese institutions, Clark and Fujimoto’s Product Development Performance (1991), and firsthand knowledge of the Toyota chief engineer system. Quotations and titles translated from the Japanese are the author’s renderings. AI was used in the editing of this article.
Art Smalley is president of Art of Lean, Inc.