Toyota's Chief Engineer

[Matt Roberts]

Gang:

Great to see everyone at the first Agile Austin Architecture SIG!

I brought up the concept of the Toyota Chief Engineer today during the
SIG meeting. Here's a bit more background about it:
http://www.lean.org/common/display/?o=906. Reading the story of
Toyota's first Cheif Engineer is fascinating stuff!

Here's the description from the Lean Enterprise Institute:

<<
Chief Engineer

The term used at Toyota for the program manager with total
responsibility for the development of a product line; previously known
by the Japanese term shusa.

The chief engineer leads a small, dedicated team that creates the
product concept, develops the business case, leads the technical
design of the product, manages the development process, coordinates
with production engineering and sales/marketing, and takes the product
into production.

Chief engineers typically have strong technical skills that enable
them to effectively lead and coordinate the technical work of
engineers, designers, and other developers assigned to their projects.
Their most important responsibility is to integrate the work of the
development team around a coherent and compelling vision for the
product.

However, chief engineers do not directly supervise most of the
developers who work on their products. Most members of the development
team report to managers within their own functional units (in Toyota’s
case, body engineering, drive train engineering, test engineering,
purchasing, and so forth). The organizational structure sets up a
natural tension between the project leader (who wants to realize his
product vision) and the functional units (who understand intimately
what is possible).

This creative tension becomes a source of innovation as the project
leaders continually push the organization into new territory according
to market needs, even as the functional units try to keep the project
leaders true to the organization’s technological capabilities. Also
called an Entrepreneur System Designer or Deployment Leader.



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All the best,

Matt Roberts