Management and Manufacturing Philosophy to Toyota Case Study

Management and Manufacturing Philosophy to Toyota - Case Study Example This management and manufacturing philosophy is, without doubt, the key to Toyota's global success but, upon consideration of the reasons for its recent overtake of the U.S. market, one finds that it is a combination of both its decision to Americanize and its management philosophy. Toyota has Americanized and, its Americanization is large, although not entirely, responsible for its success in the U.S. market. As Naughton et al. (2005) explain, a change of leadership at Toyota led to the abandonment of its "cooperative competition doctrine," as which outlined that Toyota's presence in the United States would not be that of a competitor whose goal was to overtake leading American car manufacturers such as GM. Instead, Toyota was to maintain a "respectful distance" in order to avoid arousing both public and political anger as a direct outcome of its appearing to undermine U.S. symbols, in this case, GM (Naughton et al., 2005). Therefore, even though it had the capacity and the potential to compete with GM and, eventually, to dominate the U.S. market, Toyota's leadership made the strategic decision to avoid doing so. Toyota's decision to forgo its "cooperative competition" philosophy is not, in its... ose aim was the weakening of the American economy and the strengthening of the Japanese one but, as a domestic manufacturer, an American automobile manufacturer whose origins happen to be foreign. Indeed, its decision to hire American managers in its U.S. plants and offices and to give itself a quintessentially American image facilitated public and political acceptance of it as a constructive addition to the American economy (Fujimoto, 1999). The implication here is that Americanization effectively annihilated the protective barrier which domestic consumers generally impose vis--vis foreign competitors whom they believe function as a threat to the health of the domestic economy and, by extension, to the livelihood of the domestic labor force (Fujimoto, 1999). That Toyota's decision to reinvent itself as an American company, to abandon its "cooperative competition" doctrine, is that one change which stands out as central to its recent successes on the U.S. market, is an opinion echoed by several (Taylor and Kahn, 1997; Fujimoto, 1999; Schonberger, 2001). Taylor and Kahn (1997) contend that success on the American market was not simply an outcome of its adoption of an American image,' but its highly successful embrace of the American management and competitive philosophy.  Ã‚