I know that if I destroyed a press car while doing something stupid, I’d be in big trouble. I can only imagine the panic of the college intern at Toyota many years ago who took a press car he had no right to, went out joyriding with his friends, and wrecked it. That’s it. You’re done. You’re out of the business forever, and your college career is over.
But Toyota didn’t handle it like that, because it’s not The Toyota Way. The gentleman telling me this story was a recent hire at the time, and was used to the typical way of doing business in North America. When he found out the intern destroyed a car, he was apoplectic — and ready to can him and then some, as anyone else would — but he was shown that this was a teaching moment for himself as much as for the intern.
He was told: Let’s keep the intern on. Let’s make clear that there are consequences for his actions that will be repudiated with overtime. And let’s let the quality of his work speak for itself. We all make mistakes; what matters is how we handle them. He ended up doing quite well and finished his time at Toyota successfully, and the gent telling me this story as a means of explaining his introduction to The Toyota Way is retiring from his VP position this year.
The foundation of the current cultural zeitgeist is a lamentation of all-consuming late-stage capitalism, where the world is being destroyed and our lives are being reduced to nothing, all in the pursuit of short-term profits by corporate entities with entirely too much power. They masquerade as though they’re not doing that very thing, and that they care with empty gestures and shallow virtue-signalling, even though we all know they’re out to squeeze everyone and everything for every last dollar. We’re too powerless to do anything about it, and we collectively wonder, for the love of God, why can’t we do better than this?
Toyota is doing better. They’ve been doing better all along. And in the truest tradition of actually doing and being better, they’ve been rather humble about it. But as part of a cross-country road trip celebrating their 60th anniversary in Canada, I hit the road with Toyota and a number of their leaders and execs, making stops along the way to see how they got started in this country, how they’ve become integrated into our lives, and to celebrate their success.
Each leg of the 9,000-kilometre voyage from coast to coast has a different focus. The leg I joined went from Montreal to North Bay, with a focus on how these cars are made. It’s a curious thing to try to write about; when I was trying to pitch this story to myself, I was struggling to come up with a compelling angle. The most careful car company is showing us their business practice and processes. Who cares? How am I supposed to spin that?
The thing is, I don’t have to spin it. It’s actually just compelling, and very endearing. Toyota’s process is incredible. Their authenticity is unmatched in modern business. Their commitment to their culture of continuous improvement and deliberately reinforcing that every day at every step at every level of the business is … humbling. This is how it’s done; how it should be done.
I’ve mentioned Kaizen before in the context of Toyotas; it’s Japanese for continuous improvement, and it’s one of the core foundations of their corporate culture. You’ll see that word everywhere at their vehicle processing centre in Scarborough, Ont., their massive Eastern Parts Distribution Centre in Clarington, and at their highly accoladed megafactory in Cambridge, where they churn out more than half a million cars a year. I thought Kaizen was a noble ethos, but it’s more concrete than just an idea. It’s a directive that all must adhere to, for the greater good.
Take their new Eastern Parts Distribution Center in Clarington, Ont., just outside of Toronto. It opened in 2020, serving as the central supplier for over 200 Toyota dealers from Manitoba to Newfoundland. Sure, it’s a huge and intricate operation, but more than that, it’s so carefully considered from top to bottom that it defies belief. Climate control comes entirely from geothermal energy, so this sprawling warehouse with dozens of bay doors is always at 22 degrees, consuming hardly any power regardless of what’s going on outside.
The windows are “cool glass,” self-dimming to reduce heat entering the building, and thus saving energy. On a sunny day, 2,200 roof-mounted solar panels provide significantly more power than the facility needs, and instead of capturing it in a massive battery, it’s circulated back into the grid by the building’s automation system. It’s a net positive energy source, giving more than it needs. In a way, this warehouse is also a power plant.
A colossal cistern collects rainwater and melting snow from the roof of the building and its surrounding area, using it for bathrooms and saving hundreds of thousands of litres of water per year. Toyota cares deeply about minimizing the environmental impact of their operations, and this new facility meets their own ambitious target of being carbon-neutral by 2035 well ahead of schedule. Regardless of whether or not you care about that, there’s no denying it’s also just smart business to be self-sufficient and have no utility bills.
That facility’s careful use of resources is one of those things that “sounds like a nice idea, but it would never work for us.” Except that … it can. It’s hard, it takes a lot of work to make it come to reality, and in a way, a lot of even harder work in sitting down and figuring out exactly how to do it all. But it can be done. You have to trust your own process. It takes time to come to fruition via Kaizen, but there’s no reason you can’t do it — and do it better.
It goes beyond hardware. The people handling the hardware are just as vital, and even more carefully handled. So much care goes into ensuring safety, implementing processes that make it nearly impossible for injuries to occur and also ensuring physical well-being, with tools like pneumatic lifts and exo-skeletons used to reduce physical strain. Great care goes into the mind’s well-being, too; tasks are rotated regularly to prevent monotony and keep the mind as sharp as the body is able.
The care goes beyond the immediate work, too. Circle meetings with team members and leaders are conducted every day to see how yesterday went, to hear what can be improved, and that goes from either side. If a team member has an idea about how to improve a process, it goes up to their leader, and in turn through their leaders, is considered and implemented. There’s no arrogant telling of a front-line worker how to work better. Leadership wants to hear how they can help them be more efficient, and so far as I can tell, Toyota actually means it.
Beyond the people in the facility are the people outside. Toyota is a big believer in building local and investing local. They’ve worked with the county in which the Eastern Parts Distribution Centre is located to construct a nature trail that connects the facility to the very popular Silver Creek trail nearby, allowing their more local employees to walk or bike to work. It had the benefit of creating more green space for local residents enjoy as well; this goes alongside a long history of charitable donations and fundraising for many great causes over the years.
With this culture of collaboration and consensus, punitive measures for mistakes are nullified. The problem with punishing mistakes is that mistakes then get hidden, so instead, it’s encouraged to find and report issues that can be remedied. Similarly, it serves no benefit to penalize a part supplier for failing to meet a contractual obligation, as they’ll like create a decline in quality in trying to come up to speed. Instead, Toyota will send consultants to help them streamline their process by sharing their own, and getting them where they need to be. This benefits both the supplier and Toyota; what a concept.
None of this is done in the name of charity or virtue-signalling. It’s just good business. Be thoughtful, be careful, take care of your people, take care of your community, take care of your customers — and they’ll take care of you. Through this, everyone wins. Through years of Kaizen, ensuring efficient processes, safe and ergonomically sound conditions for workers, and rigorous quality checks — that a more unscrupulous business might call redundant — Toyota has effectively managed to eliminate human error without sacrificing the humanity behind it. It’s engineering people through a compassionate process, and it’s one of the most astonishing feats of genius I’ve ever seen.
I feel privileged to have been shown this. This wasn’t a typical new car press launch where I learned about a new product. Instead, I learned a new way of thinking. It’s no surprise Toyota has been so wildly successful in Canada over the last 60 years. Now that I’ve seen how they’ve done it, I’m eager to see more of it, because it means we all get to succeed.
