Notably missing from my recounting of this story are Principles 2-6 of the Toyota Way (under the category, The Right Process Will Produce the Right Results). These deal more with the processes used at Toyota...
The seemingly impossible deadlines set by top leadership for the Prius project and the numerous technical challenges faced by the Prius engineers dramatically improved Toyota’s already excellent product development process in two key ways: 1....
Over the next few months, Uchiyamada worked closely with the styling studios, the artists of the industry, to design the Prius. Finally, in July 1996, Uchiyamada had a car to develop. Once a car style...
But something important happened in August 1995. Toyota named a new president, Hiroshi Okuda, the first non-Toyoda family member to be the president in the history of the company. From the outside, he was viewed...
From the time Uchiyamada agreed to develop a hybrid concept vehicle in November 1994 until the deadline for the auto show in October 1995, there was less than a year to develop at least a...
At this point in 1994, the team still had rejected the notion of a hybrid engine. It was considered too new and risky technology. In September 1994, the team met with Executive VP Akihiro Wada...
Uchiyamada proved to be a creative leader, yet very focused on achieving aggressive timing targets. In fact, the more detailed conceptual blueprint was completed in just six months. Normally the first step in this phase...
The next step was to develop a more detailed blueprint for the vehicle. High-level executives pondered who should lead the effort and settled on the unlikely choice of Takeshi Uchiyamada as the chief engineer. Uchiyamada...
Risuke Kubochi, General Manager of General Engineering, stepped forward and agreed to lead the effort. He was formerly the chief engineer of Celica. He had a reputation for being aggressive and not terribly friendly, but...