Welcome to the Daily 5 report for Thursday, June 26.
Toyota lost an important link in its corporate culture this month, with the passing of legendary production guru Nampachi Hayashi. He died June 21 at age 82.
As Hans Greimel reports from Tokyo, Hayashi was tapped by the company's founding family to bring Japan's flagship carmaker back to its roots in 2009 after it slumped to its first operating loss in seven decades.
After being promoted to the board of directors that year, Hayashi redoubled his focus on a "kaizen mindset" of continuous improvement, and helped put the Japanese juggernaut back on the road to profitability. The idea is the North Star of Akio Toyoda's mantra of "ever-better cars."
"The biggest problem is thinking you are OK," Hayashi was fond of saying.
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Hayashi was one of the last direct disciples of Taiichi Ohno, the founder of the Japanese carmaker's world-renowned production system.
Ohno died in 1990, but Hayashi carried the torch into the modern era.
Among Hayashi's pupils in the Toyota Way was Toyoda, the third-generation family leader who was appointed president in 2009, in the same board shuffle that promoted Hayashi.
Toyoda revived his namesake automaker and became chairman in 2023 after driving the company to record profits and sales. Hayashi retired from Toyota in 2018.
In other news, software company Elektrobit and contract manufacturing upstart Foxconn have signed a joint agreement to develop a platform for software-defined electric vehicles, the companies said June 25.
Be sure to check out our latest buy-sell database update, read this story about a dealership employee busted for allegedly stealing three vehicles totaling $200,000 in value, and our editorial about how after a year since the crippling cybersecurity attacks on CDK Global, some dealers still aren't putting enough effort into safeguarding digital data.
That's it for now. Have a great rest of your day.
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— Wes Raynal, assistant web editor
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