Understanding and career planning of GAC Toyota

At this point, readers should have clearly realized that in order to establish a lean product development system, it is necessary not only to adopt lean development tools and commitments to make the organization lean, but also to change the way of doing things. Toyota's strict selection and training of product development processes and production engineers can illustrate this point. It also uses structured on-the-job training and consulting methods. From the beginning, Toyota attached great importance to the training and development of engineering and technical personnel. In fact, in Toyota, employee development is considered as important as product development. Toyota managers are trained as mentors, and they regard every project as an opportunity to train engineers. Training employees is the basic work of managers. All managers also regard the performance of their own team as a direct manifestation of their own abilities. This is everyone's business. Toyota's recruitment in Japan, Toyota's position is very popular, and the company's recruitment process is also notoriously strict (note that Toyota is not always like this, and it is difficult to find outstanding talents in the early days). The number of applicants from the best universities in Tokyo and Kyoto greatly exceeds the number of positions needed. The recruitment process is centralized, and engineers are usually recruited to enterprises in batches, resulting in a new class every year. These classes are usually large in scale, consisting of 300 new students, of whom the educational level ratio is roughly as follows: 2 doctors, 0/98 masters/kloc, and 0/00 bachelors/kloc, all of whom are engineering majors. When recruiting, these new engineers don't know where they will eventually take up their jobs. Although Toyota will certainly make use of their expertise, their final position is determined after going through the initial stage of career planning. These new engineers of Toyota are top students in the school, but this is not the only consideration in the recruitment process. Every candidate has to go through a series of high-intensity interviews to comprehensively examine his personality characteristics to confirm whether the candidate conforms to Toyota culture. Every candidate has to go through a thorough investigation, and the information sources include Toyota-related professors and current Toyota engineers. In fact, some graduates who were recently hired by Toyota as engineers were sent back to their alma mater to hold job fairs in order to fully understand the candidates. The following are the key characteristics that Toyota wants to hire new employees: love of cars and technical work. ? Technical ability. Ability to solve problems creatively (think outside the box). ? Teamwork ability [nemawashi (pre-preparation and preparation), mutual cooperation, * * * sharing information]. The ability to "grasp the situation" quickly, thoroughly and in detail (what to look for, ask questions and understand things). Concise status communication skills. Self-discipline to always work according to the schedule. The motivation to work hard for the goal. Devotion to work and the company (if willing to work overtime to complete the work). The training and development of Toyota The career path of Toyota engineers is usually called "Toyota T" (Toyota? )。 This "t" should be written backwards.

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The top of the "T" indicates that an engineer's career starts from a short-term stage with a wide range of contents, and the bottom of the "T" indicates the need for long-term development in a specific technical field. A typical freshman class will have about one month of regular training, including quality education and introduction to Toyota history and tradition. Next, these new employees will spend three to four months actually operating and manufacturing cars in the factory. Then, they may have to stay at the dealer for another 2-3 months, and may be sent to sell cars door to door. The purpose of Toyota training process is to let engineers understand the automobile business from the perspective of Toyota and customers. This * * * training mode implemented in the new class of engineers also makes new employees have some understanding of the beginning of * * *, which is an important aspect of building culture and instilling loyalty in the whole career process. One thing is clear: every employee works for Toyota as a whole, not for a specific functional department. During this guidance period, Toyota constantly evaluates these new engineers to determine their most suitable positions. ? Training and development of Toyota body and structural engineering department? When a new engineer comes to the body and structural engineering department, the department usually provides him/her with a mentor (senior engineer). Each new engineer will also be assigned an improvement project called "Newcomer Project". This is usually a small but challenging technical project (such as reducing the number of harness fastener holes required on parts). The purpose of this exercise is to let new engineers use basic engineering tools and find other ways to complete this task, which is a process to help teach Toyota engineering methods. For example, Toyota's mentor stressed that engineers should never just submit answers to their bosses. More importantly, new engineers should consider various possible solutions and their effects, and express them in the form of decision matrix or A3 report, thus showing that they have fully considered all the situations. The newcomer project is also a continuation of the socialization process, further integrating new engineers into Toyota's production model. Newcomer program is a challenging experience, which is obviously different from university education and Toyota's first-year regular training. All this is new. For many new engineers, this experience is quite emotional, and it often leaves a deep impression on people, so that senior managers can still vividly describe their new projects in detail. ? When the new engineers complete the new project for 4-9 months, Toyota will assign them to relevant positions in the body and structural engineering department. These engineers all know that they have to go through a high-intensity two-level on-the-job training period, which we briefly talked about in Chapter 6. Engineers who successfully complete this on-the-job training can get the first engineering level. The first level lasts about two years, and the main job is to work hard in front of the computer-aided design (CAD) terminal under the guidance of senior engineers (engineers must learn how to complete CAD work by themselves). After this initial first stage, the body engineer will have to work in the same technical department for a longer time (3 ~ 6 years) and be responsible for designing some parts related to the body. Then the management will think that this employee can become the chief engineer (lead? Engineer). In the development stage of about 8 years, the manager will continue to provide counseling and interview engineers 3 ~ 4 times a year. The results of these interviews are not only the subjective opinions of managers on their work performance and cooperation performance. On the contrary, the mentor/manager will measure an engineer's technical progress and compliance with the company's processes and standard methods according to the standard skills that Toyota wants them to have, and will also consider the opinions of people who cooperate with the engineer as a supplement to this information. According to these situations, the manager will summarize the improvements and formulate the corresponding action plan, which will be the measurement content of the next interview. Toyota also adopts "policy management" (hoshin? Kanri) process (this concept will be discussed in chapter 15), so that every engineer will have a specific goal to measure himself. Engineers have worked in the company for 10 ~ 12 years and are eligible to be promoted to a first-class management position.