Shoichiro Toyoda, who led Toyota’s surge into U.S. market, dies at 97

Shoichiro Toyoda, the second-generation leader of Japanese auto giant Toyota, who oversaw a major U.S. expansion in the 1980s with manufacturing plants and ambitious goals as Detroit’s carmakers struggled with the punishing realities of global competition, died Feb. 14 at 97.

Paul A. Eisenstein, editor of automotive news site the Detroit Bureau, said Mr. Toyoda took over Toyota when it was a struggling Japanese brand in the 1950s and, within three decades, brought in assembly-line techniques and quality-control standards that became the industry pacesetter.

Mr. Toyoda reinforced a devotion to detail that remains ingrained in Toyota corporate culture. A study by Harvard Business Review noted that Mr. Toyoda’s rules included turning off the company lights at lunchtime to save money and designing offices to take every inch into account for maximum use and cost benefit.

As Toyota’s plants expanded outside Japan, Mr. Toyoda rigidly enforced company’s “just-in-time” inventory philosophy that had factories able to shift production models quickly to respond to shifting consumer demands.

Yet he also could make bold and unexpected moves. In 1990, he upended the structure of middle management, taking away staff and subordinates to make the executives deal directly with lower-level workers. The move reflected his belief in “genchi genbutsu,” or the importance of seeing things firsthand.

“We felt we suffered from large-corporation disease, . . . so we embarked on a cure,” Mr. Toyoda said. “We have a saying: ‘A large man has difficulty exercising his wits fully.’”