SHOICHIRO Toyoda, the eldest son of Toyota’s founder Kiichiro Toyoda passed away on Valentine’s Day just 13 days shy of what would have been his 98th birthday. Father of Toyota’s current president Akio Toyoda. He served for 11 years as Toyota Motor Company’s president after joining the company in 1952. His father, Kiichiro, led the Toyota Industries Corporation, a company that used to make mechanical looms, which in turn was established by his father Sakichi Toyoda.
“Dr. Toyoda” an honorary degree he earned after an engineering doctorate, helped form Toyota’s quality control system–kaizen–as it is now known in the automotive industry, which means continuous improvement. Kaizen created the Toyota way of doing business, bringing in “just-in-time” materials management, quality circles that ensured teams worked in unison with goals, allowing employees from anywhere in the organization to make suggestions on improvements to various facets of the brand creating manufacturing and quality control systems used by almost every automobile brand.
Shoichiro graduated from Nagoya University as a mechanical engineer. He also received a Ph.D. from Tohoku University with a research paper on fuel injection.
He is also credited for leading the development of Toyota’s manufacturing prowess, the Motomachi plant now known as Toyota City. Currently builder of the Supra, GR Yaris, Lexus LFA, and other performance Toyotas, it is also where the legendary 2000GT and Century were made. Shoichiro’s huge dream for an automobile-only assembly plant was considered to be a big gamble when the plant was being constructed. The gamble paid off and Motomachi became the leading assembly plant in Japan for Toyota’s overseas ambitions.
Dr. Toyoda took over as Toyota’s president in 1981. He kept the post for 11 years. Despite the difficulties of the times, just recovering from the oil crisis just 6 years past, Toyota entered the US market. Some thirty years earlier Shoichiro was assigned to do penetrate the US market with the Toyota Crown. He failed. The failure however taught him important lessons on how to make Toyota a globally recognized brand. He eventually re-established Toyota in the US with a partnership with General Motors. GM learned Japanese management and engineering techniques, while Toyota had a foothold in the US market.
A true car enthusiast, Dr. Toyoda established a car club in when he was still at Nagoya University. According to a Nikkei report, he was a hands-on manager and was at the forefront of testing Toyotas during launch events. Even the legendary Toyota test driver Hiromu Naruse, known as the ‘driving doctor,’ for his skills in spotting problems in the cars during testing, valued Shoichiro’s skills as a driver.
Akio Toyoda learned from his father a love for cars, as he would join him in driving all sorts of vehicles, not only Toyota, or watch the races and drive in the many circuits across Japan. The elder Toyoda instilled in his son the code of “genchi genbutsu”–literally translated as ‘go and see for yourself” which made Aiko always in touch with his customers, the employees, and the production processes. Akio also learned driving from Naruse and took the pseudonym ‘Morizo’ when he is racing or doing performance testing.
“Genchi genbutsu” also led Dr. Toyoda’s philanthropical pursuits.
In 2012, he accepted the chairmanship of the Toyota Motors Philippines (TMP) School of Technology. When TMP Chairman George Ty personally communicated the plans for the technical school, designed specifically for the training of Toyota after-sales technicians who will be deployed in service centers in the Philippines and abroad. Dr. Toyoda was enthralled with the idea and immediately supported it.
Shoichiro Toyoda’s transformational leadership steered Toyota into the automotive giant it is today.
