The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence through Leadership Development

The missing link to long-term Lean success! Despite the fact that companies worldwide have adopted Lean production, none has sustained the same levels of excellence as Toyota. Why? Leadership. In The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership, Jeffrey Liker and Gary L. Convis, a former executive V.P. and managing officer of Toyota, help executives and senior managers get employees to refocus their efforts--from simply performing their singular function to continuously improving in collaboration across the organization. Case studies from Toyota clearly illustrate the methods that create powerful, effective Lean leadership.

About the Authors

Jeffrey Liker, author of the popular Toyota Way books, is the acknowledged expert on Toyota processes. He is professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan. After his executive leadership at Toyota, Gary L. Convis became the CEO of Dana Holding Corporation, a $6.1 billion supplier to the global automotive, commercial vehicle, and off-highway markets, and helped lead it to a successful turnaround from bankruptcy.

Gary L. Convis is the former chief executive officer and board member of Dana Holding Corporation, a supplier to the global automotive, commercial vehicle, and off-highway markets. He later became special advisor to the CEO of Dana and speaks and consults to executives committed to transformation to operational excellence.

Mr. Convis spent more than four decades at Toyota, General Motors Corporation, and Ford Motor Company. In 1984 he was selected to manage the start-up of NUMMI. He became the first American president of Toyota’s largest plant outside Japan, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky (TMMK), in 2001. In 2003, he was the first American manufacturing executive appointed by Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) to be a managing officer of TMC, as well as executive vice president of Toyota Motor Engineering and Manufacturing North America, Inc. Previously, he spent more than 20 years in various roles with GM and Ford Motor Company.

Mr. Convis is a board member of Cooper-Standard Automotive, Inc. and Compass Automotive Group, Inc. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics with a minor in physics from Michigan State University.