ABSTRACT
Numerous studies in geography have shown that Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) in the auto and other industries has created branch plants that, to various degrees, modify Japanese practice in accordance with 'local cultures of production'. Within the business and related literatures these adaptations are often expressed as processes of hybridisation and the hybrid factory. This chapter focuses on to geography's understanding of the hybridisation of lean production by a case study of Toyota's new factory at Walbrzych in Poland. It focuses on the internal operations of Toyota's factory in Poland, a transitional economy within Eastern Europe. The chapter aims to assess the extent to which Toyota's new factory at Walbrzych (TMMP) duplicates or differs from company operating norms in Japan. While this assessment is fundamentally qualitative, it is organised by a six-fold classification of factory organisation, developed in the business literature that emphasise: work organisation, production control, procurement, group consciousness, labour relations and parent-subsidiary relations.
