Men of Metal - Eiji Toyoda

While it is true that Toyota, the world's largest automobile manufacturer, was founded by Kiichrio Toyoda, the man responsible for taking the company from its humbler Toyoda Automatic Loom Works days to global auto domination is actually Eiji Toyoda.

In 1929, Kiichiro Toyoda made the decision to move from the loom making business to manufacturing automobiles and established the company’s first plant in the city of Nagoya, Japan. Kiichiro’s cousin Eiji who shared a close friendship with Kiichiro, was giving the responsibility of overseeing the construction of a new factory on the outskirts of Naogya in 1938.

Some time in the 50s,  Eiji Toyoda got an opportunity to visit Ford’s River Rouge Plant in Dearborn Michigan. This would be the turning point for not just the man, but also for the company itself, and very importantly, these events would later influence almost every auto company around world in terms of how they went about the business of making cars. After seeing that the Ford plant could churn out 8,000 cars a day, as opposed to Toyota, which in contrast could only manage 2,500 cars a day, even after being in the automobile manufacturing business for 13 years, Eiji Toyoda decided to adopt some of mass producing processes he had seen in the United States, albeit with a qualitative twist.

What Toyoda came up with, was nothing short of genius. Together with a veteran loom machinist, Taiichi Ohno, he developed some core concepts which, in the future, would come to be known as 'The Toyota Way'. One of the very integral idea behind these core concepts was ‘Kanban’, a system of labelling parts used on assembly lines, which would ensure that the entire production process remains as efficient as possible, and which was the an early precursor to bar codes. Toyoda also fine-tuned the concept of Kaizen, a process of incremental but constant improvements designed to cut production and labour costs while boosting overall quality.

In the 1950, when Eiji Toyoda was managing director of Toyota, the company failed to make any leeway into the US market with the Crown sedan, but when he moved into the president’s chair in 1967, he managed to do just that with the Toyota Corolla. He became the fifth president of Toyota Motor, and went on to become the company's longest serving CEO till date. After stepping down from the presidency in 1981 and assuming the title of chairman, Eiji Toyoda’s decision to enter the luxury car market gave birth to the Lexus brand, which today is considered one of the world’s best. 

Eiji Toyoda is the prime example of what good leadership, ingenuity and perseverance can achieve, taking a fledgling automobile manufacturing business to one that is not only the largest in the world, but is also highly regarded for levels of quality and reliability, which very few companies from around the world can match.