Consumer Report's best cars of 1999 lists the Toyota Camry as the No. 1 family car, Toyota's Lexus as the leading upscale sedan, and Ford's F-150 as the leading strong pickup. I continue to be amazed at Toyota Motor Manufacturing's (TMM) success. A company that began in Japan with about $3.5 million in 1933 now has become the leading family car manufacturer in America. How can this be?

There are a number of answers, of course, but one very important one might just surprise you: Henry Ford. The story goes that when the founder of Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kiichiro Toyoda, was entering the automobile business, he decided to study the master. At that time, 1933, Henry Ford was the leading automobile manufacturer. Toyoda came to visit Ford, possibly more than once -- accounts differ. Evidently, while he was here in the U. S., he picked up a copy of Henry Ford's Today and Tomorrow, published in 1926. My guess is that this book was eye-opening reading on the long boat trip back home. Within the pages of this little book, I believe Toyoda found the basic philosophy on which to structure TMM, an organization that is today the leading world-class lean manufacturing system.

Creating a vision

The vision of any organization provides the ideal future state it expects to achieve. The best statement of Ford's vision that I can find is on the very first page of his book, Today and Tomorrow. He states, "Take just one idea. One that fell on me [was to] to develop a small, strong, simple automobile, to make it cheaply and pay high wages in its making." Henry Ford achieved his vision on October 1, 1908, the day he made his first Model T, the car that changed the world.

As part of my work at the University of Kentucky, I have had the opportunity to review many vision statements of various manufacturing organizations. I have yet to find an American company vision that comes close to that of Henry Ford's. The one exception is that of TMMK, Georgetown, Kentucky.

See for yourself. Find out the exact wording of Toyota's mission, the statement that guides its Georgetown plant. After you have done this, just reflect and see if there are parallel characteristics between the Camry and the Model T. Now let me give you a warning: as you reflect, avoid getting caught up in comparing technologies. That is not the issue. Core values are.

The importance of core values

Stop and think a moment about how crucial it is to have guidance. Think about the half-dozen or so core values that guide your organization today. Every organization has them or it won't be an organization for long. These are the basic beliefs, how the organization holds itself together. Core values are needed to guide any group, culture or society. Henry Ford intuitively understood this when he structured his organization.

I have identified six values that Ford believed were critical to his success:

1. Always focus on the end customer.

2. Always focus on the employee's needs.

3. Always utilize continuous improvement of processes.

4. Always focus on eliminating the wastes of transportation, storage and inspection.

5. Always work from standards.

6. Always learn from wastes and manage change.

Each of these values represents a vital element in establishing an effective, lean manufacturing operation. First, Ford viewed his first customer as his own worker. He believed the worker should be put in a position to buy what he makes. This he accomplished by paying high wages. He put the car within reach of his average worker. This is a hard and difficult pill to swallow for many of our current manufacturing managers. Unfortunately, many have the idea that "we will move our plant off-shore , where we can pay minimum wages and, if they leave, we will have a waiting replacement." This thinking leads to numerous problems.

Ford stated, "Business must be run at a profit, else it will die. But when anyone attempts to run a business solely for profit and thinks not at all of the service to the community, then also the business must die, for it no longer has a reason for existence." The needs of the employee, the needs of the community and the needs of the end customer provided a clear vision for Ford to operate his automobile business.

Learning from waste was a primary driver in Ford's way of doing business. When we look at the four basic activities of manufacturing: transportation, storage, inspection and value-added operation, we know, from practicing industrial engineering for almost a hundred years, that the first three of the four are wastes. Ford understood this. "How are we to reckon waste? We count waste in terms of materials. Materials are less important than human beings-- although we have not yet come quite around to thinking in that fashion. My theory of waste goes back to the thing itself into the labor of producing it. We want to use material to its utmost in order that time of man may not be lost." Ford focused on what man does in processes as a primary means of learning from waste.

Ford saw the use of standards as another means to the effective use of man's labor. "Those who are unacquainted with the processes and problems of industry are given to picturing a standardized world in which we should all live in the same sort of houses, wear the same sort of clothing, eat the same sort of food and all think and act in the same way." Ford believed standards existed to support people; he believed they should have an opportunity to change standards when they no longer support the worker. Again in his words, "The eventuality of industry is not a standardized, automatic world in which people will not need brains. The eventuality is a world in which people will have a chance to use their brains, for they will not be occupied from early morning until late at night with the business of gaining a livelihood. Industry exists to serve the public of which the working man is a part." Within a lean manufacturing environment, the worker is the primary decision maker regarding standards. The worker is expected to think and discover new improvements in standards.