TIME Magazine: TIME 100: Hiroshi Okuda / Fujio Cho


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Hiroshi Okuda / Fujio Cho

Builders & Titans
	Lee Scott Carly Fiorina Abigail Johnson David Neeleman Rupert Murdoch Lindsay Owen-Jones Howard Schultz Azim Premji Warren Buffett Michael Dell Al-Jazeera Lord John Browne Hiroshi Okuda / Fujio Cho Sergey Brin / Larry Page Bernard Arnault Sepp Blatter Belinda Stronach Meg Whitman Daniel Vasella Steve Jobs
	Leaders & Revolutionaries Artists & Entertainers Scientists & Thinkers Heroes & Icons Introduction Essay FROM THE ARCHIVE: Builders & Titans from 1900-1999

Toyota's Tenacious Twosome

By JIM FREDERICK

AFP

FROM THE TIME ARCHIVE

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"The Machine That Changed the World," as a study at M.I.T. called it, isn't the telephone or even the automobile. It's the devastatingly efficient assembly-line method called the Toyota Production System (TPS), which has revolutionized the way factories are run worldwide. With a combined 93 years at Toyota between them, few people have done more to perfect "the Toyota Way" than chairman Hiroshi Okuda, 71, and president Fujio Cho, 67, Toyota's first two CEOs not to hail from the company's founding Toyoda clan. Okuda and Cho have taught hundreds of companies the TPS secrets of eliminating waste, reducing defects and maximizing flow. "From the very beginning, Toyota learned much from other carmakers," says Cho. "Sharing what we have discovered since then is one way we can give something back."

Despite such magnanimity, Toyota is a tenacious competitor. After years of turbocharged growth, the company is running neck and neck with Ford to be the world's second largest automaker, after General Motors. But its leaders acknowledge that efficiency is not enough if Toyota's growth is to continue. "We need to continue innovating," says Okuda. That explains a campaign to shift the industry from its dependence on petroleum-based fuels. Despite widespread skepticism, Toyota pressed on with the Prius, the world's first mass-market petroleum-electric hybrid car. A hybrid SUV is scheduled for release this fall. "Any carmaker who says hybrid cars can't be profitable," Okuda muses, "I would tell them to start looking for a new line of work."

—With reporting by Michiko Toyama

Sept. 27, 1999	Dec. 7, 1998	March 17, 1941

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