Research
In-depth articles that go beyond surface-level lean — examining what the original Japanese sources actually say, how Toyota really practices these methods, and where common interpretations go wrong.
One Hundred Years of PDCA Thinking
The full history of the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle — from Taylor and Shewhart in America to Mizuno and Ishikawa in Japan. Most people attribute PDCA to Deming, who neither created it nor fully endorsed it. The real story is far more interesting.
The Machine That Changed the World at 35
Still the most comprehensive, empirical, enterprise-level explanation of Toyota ever produced — and the most important work ever written on what came to be called Lean. A retrospective review of why Machine remains the defining work, 35 years later.
Toyota Product Development History
A structured history of Toyota's product development engineering organization, tracing its evolution from a small automotive group inside a loom manufacturer in the 1930s to today's mobility-era development structures.