Toyota is booming, but its PR department has had its hands full with a high-profile sexual harassment lawsuit in the United States -- and now this damning insider's revelations about coercive work practices, unsafe production lines and mismanagement.
Darius Mehri, an Iranian-American, worked for three years at a subsidiary of Toyota as a computer-simulation design engineer. His story is one of growing disenchantment as he discovers the grim realities of work in Japan's industrial heartland. Along the way he challenges many shibboleths about corporate paternalism, harmony, consensus, kaizen (continuous improvement) and the vaunted Toyota Production System.
This keenly observed account imparts considerable firsthand information about current workplace practices, one that is reminiscent of Satoshi Kamata's bleak assessment in "Japan in the Passing Lane" (1973). Thirty years on Mehri observes that "the same unsafe work environment, the same oppressive mechanisms of worker control, and the same power manipulations."