ABSTRACT

Thinking habits, which are greatly influenced by geography, history, culture, religion, or customs, are identified as a prime driver of behavior in our world. By maintaining poor thinking habits, a company would soon find itself with a corporate thinking habit disease, which may result in its bankruptcy. The root strength of Toyota lies in its thinking habits. Tokugawa and his samurai from Mikawa had common thinking habits that respected such values as simplicity/fortitude, frugality/efforts, honest poverty/wealth building, austerity, long-term perspective/long-range planning and peace and prosperity within one's family. There are many other people who inherited and influenced Toyota's thinking habits, such as Eiji Toyoda, who built on the thinking habits of Sakichi and Kiichiro Toyoda in support of Toyota's growth. A document describing Toyota's values was created and called "The Toyota Way 2001". The two pillars of The Toyota Way 2001 are wisdom and Kaizen and respect of humanity.