Meeting with Isao Yoshino - retired Toyota manager | Faculty of Management and Economics at the Gdańsk University of Technology

Topic: A3 Thinking - The Toyota Way

Date: November 16, 2023, from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM (Online on MS Teams) Meeting Link: Join

Language: The meeting will be conducted in English.

Here are some questions we will collectively seek answers to:

1. What is the A3 report, and why is it so important for Toyota managers?
2. How does Toyota use the A3 report, and why is it more than just a problem-solving method?
3. What competencies can be developed using A3 Thinking?
4. In how many ways can the A3 report be utilized?

Isao Yoshino will provide insights and share his knowledge and experience gained from his entire professional life spent at Toyota in addressing these and other questions.

As an introduction, these insights are based on lectures for Toyota managers prepared by Masao NEMOTO, Managing Director of Toyota, and described in "Basics of Kanri," Toyota, Japan 1979.

"Work in a company generally involves a lot of oral communication of thoughts to each other. Both flawed presentation documents and flawed presentations will prevent you from getting your intentions sufficiently across, which may lead to work itself not going smoothly. The higher your position, the more time constraints you’ll be facing, so managing to convey the essence in a concise way is especially important for executive managers, etc. And what can be worse than failing to get your point across to external parties like the government because of a poor explanation?

In that sense, explaining/presentation skills can be considered crucial skills that are the very basis to make work between people go smoothly. This is all the more true for administrative and indirect departments where explanations/presentations carry immense weight and are the cornerstone of operational efficiency. Therefore, low-level explaining skills are not something you should think lightly of. It is absolutely crucial always to stretch your thoughts on how you can quickly make others understand you correctly."