Isao Yoshino Seminar on Lean Leadership and the Toyota Way

April 25, 2019 workshop focused on hoshin kanri and critical leadership skills related to strategy deployment and A3 thinking

Published: Tuesday, April 16, 2019 - 12:00

(Association for Manufacturing Excellence: Rolling Meadows, IL) -- Learn about the historic and cultural roots behind the people-development concepts and principles underlying the Toyota Way at the “Isao Yoshino seminar on lean leadership and the Toyota Way” to be held April 25, 2019, 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., at the University of California San Francisco.

Isao Yoshino will lead you through a morning of learning and discussion about the role of leaders and managers in a lean operating environment. Yoshino will share stories from his experiences including:
• Leading the Toyota Management Development Program (Kan-Pro) for all managers in Toyota’s headquarters to learn hoshin kanri and A3 thinking
• Developing John Shook, author of the book, Managing to Learn (Lean Enterprises Institute Inc., 2008), as his first manager in Japan
• Managing the Japan training program for the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI) managers to learn the Toyota Way

Key topics include:
• The role of managers and leaders in a lean operating environment
• History and practices of hoshin kanri (strategy deployment) and A3 thinking (A3 thinking “helps managers and executives identify, frame, and act on problems and challenges.”)
• History that led to the development of the Toyota Way
• Translating Toyota culture to other environments, including his experiences with the NUMMI plant, a joint venture established in 1983 between Toyota and GM located in Fremont, California.

This program will include both formal presentations by Yoshino and time for a Q&A discussion. Yoshino is making a special appearance in the San Francisco Bay Area at the request of AME San Francisco Bay Area Consortium facilitator Katie Anderson, with whom he developed a friendship when she lived in Japan during 2015–2016. Register for the seminar here.

Want more?

Stay for lunch then join Isao Yoshino and Katie Anderson for the interactive workshop, “Hoshin kanri practices and history with Isao Yoshino,” from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Start to develop your own hoshin A3, and learn and practice the art of “catchball”—the asking and receiving of coaching questions.

You will learn more detailed history and practices of hoshin kanri at Toyota, including its two-year “Kan-Pro” leadership program designed to teach 1,000 Toyota managers how to use A3 for hoshin (strategy) development and to improve their management capabilities.

Yoshino will share details about the design and implementation of Kan-Pro, what he learned about how to teach leaders the practices of hoshin kanri and A3 thinking, and some examples of hoshin A3s from Toyota.

Following the workshop, there will be time for discussion and reflection. Register for the interactive workshop here.

Please note: To be eligible to attend this workshop, you must also attend the morning seminar, “Isao Yoshino seminar on lean leadership and the Toyota Way,” or have attended the seminar in July 2018. You can register separately for the morning seminar here.

About the presenters

Isao Yoshino is a 40-year Toyota leader (14 years of which was in the United States) and a former NUMMI training manager based at Toyota headquarters in Japan. In 1979 and 1980, he oversaw the manager development program (“Kan-Pro” in Japanese) for all the managers at Toyota headquarters. In 1983, Yoshino was assigned to the manager of a newly established training section for NUMMI’s shop-floor leaders. During this time, he hired John Shook and other staff members from within Japan to develop a hands-on training program for American shop-floor group and team leaders who travelled from Fremont, California, to Toyota City, Japan, to learn the Toyota Production System. In June 1984, Yoshino and his team started training American shop-floor leaders for three weeks at Toyota’s plant. Yoshino has held management roles at Toyota in research, human resources, corporate planning and production control, and manufacturing. Yoshino retired from Toyota in 2006. Yoshino is currently a lecturer at the Nagoya Gakuin University and travels internationally to teach and speak about Toyota leadership, hoshin kanri, and coaching.

Katie Anderson is the founder of KBJ Anderson Consulting, a boutique consulting practice focused on helping individuals and organizations gain clarity on their goals, deepen their problem solving and coaching skills, and continuously improve themselves and their organizations. Anderson has more than 20 years of experience supporting change and improvement in organizations across a range of industries, including healthcare, government, manufacturing, biotech, and others. She also holds faculty positions at the Lean Enterprise Institute and Catalysis and is the facilitator for the Association for Manufacturing Excellence’s San Francisco Bay Area Consortium. In 2015, Anderson moved to Japan with her family for 18 months, where she became good friends with Isao Yoshino. Since then, Yoshino and Anderson have collaborated on several learning events, including leading executive learning trips in Japan. Anderson is an internationally recognized speaker. She holds a bachelor’s degree in human biology and a master’s degree of philosophy in public health.

About the host: University of California San Francisco

The University of California San Francisco (UCSF) is one of the top universities in the nation for health sciences research and higher education, and is internationally renowned for providing highly specialized and innovative care. By bringing together the world’s leading experts in nearly every area of health, UCSF Health drives advancements in treatment and technology that benefit patients everywhere. Learn more at www.ucsf.edu.

Contact the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) at (224) 232-5980 | conference@ame.org.

About The Author

Association for Manufacturing Excellence

The Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) is North America’s premier organization for the exchange of knowledge in organizational excellence through the implementation of techniques such as lean tools, leadership, lean product development, lean supply chain, and lean accounting. AME’s power is in mentoring the relationships that take place among its 5,000 members who want to improve the competitiveness of their organizations and work together by sharing knowledge. AME provides company leaders with educational opportunities to learn leading-edge topics from leaders and fellow practitioners by attending events and through networking.