Transforming Industry

19 AUTOMOTIVE Engaging auto workers Tools such as Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Power Platform are helping Toyota Motor North America (TMNA) to uphold the company credo, The Toyota Way. TMNA has 14 sales regions, 14 manufacturing plants, 1,500 dealerships, more than 36,000 employees, and more than 30 million US-built vehicles. Based on the kaizen workplace philosophy, The Toyota Way emphasizes the principles of respect for people and continuous improvement. With digital tools that feel like a natural extension of kaizen, employees are empowered to work more efficiently by cultivating teamwork, gradually improving everyday procedures, and increasing their engagement. The result is a more fulfilling work environment that strengthens TMNA employees’ allegiance to the company. There have also been significant benefits to this approach during the Covid-19 crisis. “Teams was our lifeline for creating a safe work environment for every team member when the pandemic struck,” says Jason Ballard, IS executive and general manager of Infrastructure and Operations Services at TMNA. With plants and manufacturing facilities closed and office- based employees suddenly working from home, Teams became the go-to platform for refining hundreds of processes and moving forward with safe reopening of manufacturing facilities. TMNA had begun preparing the organization to transition from 18 Skype for Business to Teams in 2019 and this preparation was key to helping the company successfully recover operations when Covid-19 arrived, allowing the company to deploy Teams Phone to 40,000 employees in just three weeks. “I give credit to our team, Microsoft, and our partner, Accenture,” says Ballard. “It was a three-way partnership.” The move to the new Teams collaboration platform was popular, despite the stress of transitioning to remote work. “For the first time in my career, we had people asking if they could go to Teams early,” says Beth Davis, IT experience owner, Digital Workplace & Learning at TMNA. “ Since the migration to Teams included Teams Phone, employees could make, receive, and transfer calls to and from landlines and mobile phones over the public switched telephone network— all in Teams.“ “When we talk about The Toyota Way, we talk about ‘plan-do-check-act’ and going through a kaizen process to get value out to the business as fast as possible,” says Tim Holman, Enterprise Architecture Business Intelligence at TMNA. “We use the Teams platform in two ways to support this. One is the traditional activity for communication and file sharing and chat, and using Planner in Teams for scrum activities. The other is the integration of Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Apps into the channels in Teams. This significantly enhances the solution as a one-stop platform for collaboration, data analysis, and workflow automation.” Read the full case study >