Written by At the Clinton Global Initiative Meeting, Toyota announced that they will be working with up to 20 community organizations across the United States in the first year to help improve performance.
They will begin with the St. Bernard Project, a New Orleans recovery organization that employs returning war veterans, AmeriCorps members and volunteers to rebuild homes devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
At Toyota, we judge our success not just on the cars we make, but also on how many people we help and communities we support. In today’s challenging economy, non-profits across the U.S. are under increasing pressure to provide more services for more people – with fewer resources. By sharing the techniques of the Toyota Production System, we hope to help these vital organizations increase productivity and efficiency, while decreasing costs and retaining jobs. We are pleased to extend this support – which has been a long-standing resource for successful for-profit companies across North America – to organizations that help people most in need.
Yoshimi Inaba, President and COO of Toyota Motor North America, Inc.
Toyota’s initiative to support community organizations is being led by the Toyota Production System Support Center (TSSC), which was originally established in 1992 to share the techniques of the Toyota Production System. TSSC’s work is focused on helping to make substantial improvements by increasing productivity, safety and quality and decreasing costs, always with a unique focus on ensuring job retention.
They already have experience working outside of manufacturing. For example:
- Long wait times at the Community Kitchen & Food Pantry in Harlem (part of the Food Bank for New York City) were reduced from more than an hour to just 18 minutes by improving processes in meal services
- At Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, applying Toyota’s renowned “just in time” supply process to the delivery of pharmacy supplies dramatically cut down on waste and is projected to save the hospital $391,000 per year.
Learn more at https://pressroom.toyota.com/toyota-production-system-june-2011/