Fujio Cho, Chairman, of Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) was born in 1937, in Tokyo, Japan. Cho went on to get his law degree in 1960 from Tokyo University after which began his 45-year career with Toyota. In these years he has spanned numerous positions such as 1960–1966, apprentice and training employee; 1966–1974, Production Control Division; 1974–1984, Manager in Production Control Division. In 1984, he was appointed General Manager of Logistics Administration and Project General Manager of Production Control Division, and in 1985, additionally became the Project General Manager of North America Project Preparation Department. In 1987, he was named TMC Project General Manager of North America Project Department. In July of the same year, he was appointed Executive Vice President of Toyota Motor Manufacturing (TMM). In September 1988, he became TMC Director, and in December 1988, he was appointed President of TMM, S.A. Inc. (now Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc.). He returned to Japan in September 1994 as Managing Director of TMC in charge of Government and Public Affairs, IT & Telecom Business. In June 1996, he was appointed Senior Managing Director of TMC. In June 1998, he was named Executive Vice President of TMC in charge of Cooperate Planning, IT and Telecom Business and Information Systems, and Industrial Vehicle and Equipment. In 1999, he became CEO and President. In his prolific rise, he has been a recipient of various esteemed awards such as, Manager of the Year, Automotive Hall of Fame, 2001; Honorary Doctorate in Engineering, University of Kentucky, 2002; Top Managers, BusinessWeek, 2003. Cho is Toyota Motor Corporation's first Director of the 21st century. It was not long before he became one of the company's top production experts. He was personally taught by Taiichi Ohno, author of the system of lean production. Under Cho's leadership Toyota became the number-two automotive company in the world and led the industry in the use of hybrid technology and advanced production techniques. He entered Tokyo University in the mid-1950s, where he studied law—an unlikely discipline for a future industrialist. He graduated in 1960 at the age of 23 and began working for Toyota that same year. He became a member of the Toyota corporate family through "adoption," not birth, as had been the case for his predecessor, Shoichiro Toyoda. Cho might have remained a minor administrative official in the provincial Japanese company had it not been for Dr. Taiichi Ohno, who would dramatically change the destinies of both Cho and Toyota. Ohno became one of the most revered men in Japan through his formulation of the theory and practice of lean production. In the 1950s and early 1960s Toyota was struggling to make trucks and cars only for the Japanese home market. Eiji Toyoda, the then highest ranking member of the founding family, dreamed of making Toyota a global company and of marketing passenger cars in America. The company, however, was not ready: Toyota vehicles were shoddy and underpowered. Ohno devised a plan for cost-effective production, wherein if the assembly process could be perfectly timed, there would be no need to worry about accumulating expensive inventories. Shoichiro Toyoda, the future heir to the company and the second cousin of Eiji, adopted this procedure in the production division and combined it with a systematic quality-control program. By the time Cho was rotating through the company as an apprentice, the outlines of the Toyota Production System (TPS) were in place. It worked clumsily at first, but the number of defects on the assembly line soon dropped sharply. Toyota cars were first marketed in America in the mid-1960s. Cho was posted to the Production Control Division in 1966, just as the Toyota Corona began selling in America. There he was thoroughly trained by Ohno, who became his personal mentor. Ohno made a deep impression on Cho, who become a manager while still in his early 30s. Ohno schooled Cho through lectures, study groups, and hands-on sessions in the factories of Toyota City. Most relevantly he taught Cho the three formulas that were the essence of the TPS: First, top managers needed not only to believe in the system but also to convey their commitment to lower-level employees. Second, everyone down to the most menial Toyota worker had to fully participate. Finally, the system needed to be internalized by all employees, who were to be dedicated to its kaizen, or constant improvement and ever-increasing efficiency. Cho was given the duty of sharpening the administrative side of the TPS and this helped Cho learn to look forward to future trends, not back to past or present economic situations. Another important lesson that Ohno impressed upon Cho was that kaizen applied to companies and individuals alike; a good professional was ever in need of improvement. Ohno also taught Cho that the TPS was more than just a system: it became, in fact, the guiding philosophy for the entire Toyota firm. Cho continued to manage production and apply his lessons so effectively that he was put in charge of logistical management by 1984. More than any other major Toyota official Cho was shaped by his American experience, of which he was destined to have plenty. The then President Shoichiro Toyoda was so impressed with Cho that he appointed him as General Manager of Toyota Motor Manufacturing USA. When the company decided to open its first North American plant in Georgetown, Kentucky, Cho was sent to America to manage it. The plant opened in May 1988; Cho considered this to be the beginning of Toyota's globalization. He directed operations at the plant, which was tremendously successful, until his return to Japan in 1994. Cho brought to America the same management style that he had practiced in Nagoya and Toyota City. He walked the shop floor and stared for many minutes at the assembly line, asking questions of and listening to answers from Kentuckians as easily as he had with Japanese. Despite his lack of an engineering degree, Cho gradually acquired a thorough practical knowledge of the mechanics of cars and trucks as well as of the buying habits of Americans. One lesson became very important to him: Americans, he discovered, wanted Japanese quality—especially Toyota quality. Cho would not be disappointed by his American charges. Soon, American consumers proved just as loyal to American-made Toyotas as they had to imported ones, soon opening the way for additional American Toyota plants. Both Toyota and Cho were very much honored and respected for the prosperity the company's success brought to Georgetown. The company was regarded as an outstanding corporate citizen, and in 2002 Cho was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Engineering by the University of Kentucky. No sooner did Cho return to Japan than he was introduced to his next mentor, the new Toyota President Hiroshi Okuda. Cho continued to serve as Senior Managing Director as he had for Okuda's predecessors. It was not long after that Okuda left Cho in charge of Toyota's all-important North American operations. The TPS was further refined while Toyota captured 10 percent of the world automotive market and closed in on Ford's number-two global position. The company ambitiously set the goal of dethroning General Motors by 2010 and becoming the world's first truly global automaker. In 1999 Okuda retired, and Cho became the second consecutive non-family Toyota President. Cho accelerated the pace of growth that had been set by Okuda. In the first three months of 2003 Toyota upstaged Ford in global unit sales for the first time. Much of the credit was given to Cho, who now attracted much media attention. Fortune described Toyota as the most respected company in the world, and BusinessWeek wondered in the title of a November 17, 2003, article, "Can Anything Stop Toyota?" While the country of Japan remained in a seemingly endless recession and Japanese management in general was criticized, Cho presided over a company awash in cash reserves and still reaping enormous profits. Writers no longer talked about the Japanese Miracle but of the Toyota Miracle, for which Cho was given credit. When questioned about Toyota Miracle, instead of spouting out a long lecture on kaizen or lean production, Cho reduces the essence of Toyota to the ability of its workers to stop the assembly line when the situation demanded, resulting in a total absence of defective cars: "It is that our employees should be courageous enough to bring the production process to a halt, if necessary" (December 3, 2003). The affable, personable Cho is, however, no less determined to realize the company vision of capturing 15 percent of the world vehicle market by 2010 and dethroning GM. Cho further explains that the 15 percent goal was less a fixed target than a vision to motivate Toyota employees to adhere to kaizen: "When you achieve an objective, you strive to reach the next objective" (December 8, 2003). One of Cho's favorite slogans was "Beat Toyota." Cho had a formidable task ahead of him. In order to achieve his stated goal, he would have to sell over nine million cars and trucks against very stiff competition. The potential markets of India and China would not yet be large enough to absorb this production; thus, Toyota's new market would have to come mainly from America and partly from Europe. To compete in those markets, Cho needed to address the issues of styling and image. Many found Toyotas to be reliable but a growing number of young, upscale Japanese were turning to the flashy new models marketed by Nissan and Honda. Cho, worried about Toyota's aging consumer base, felt that the company's cars lacked sex appeal: "Our salespeople are not 100 percent satisfied with styling," Cho said in Fortune (December 8, 2003). Consequently, he hired the British-born designer Simon Humphries. Cho recognized that engineers and other "car people" alone could not make and sell the vehicles that would push Toyota to number one in the industry. While the safety features, transmission, mileage, and engine were all important, so were the style and total image of the vehicle. Cho knew that he needed to sell all of those aspects in a single vehicle. In addition he wanted Toyota to occupy the leading edge in the sustainable car culture that he and others such as Edouard Michelin and his former superior Shoichiro Toyoda, who had become President of Keidanren, had talked about. Using huge resources in capital, research, and development, Cho took the lead in marketing the Toyota Prius, one of the world's first hybrid cars. Detroit was several years behind when the Prius was unveiled; the car soon began selling better in America than in Japan. Cho, encouraged, set plans to sell 300,000 hybrids worldwide by 2005. In October 2003 he began selling the second-generation Prius in the United States; by the autumn of 2004 he planned to unveil the hybrid Lexus RX330. Cho perceived that North America would remain absolutely paramount to the success of his company. In 2002 and 2003 Toyota sold more vehicles there than in Japan, amounting to almost 80 percent of total worldwide profits. Moreover, America was his key test market. If a car, truck, or sport-utility vehicle (SUV) sold well there, Cho and his colleagues could confidently sell it in Japan and around the world as well. The Lexus had first been introduced in America. In beginning to surpass U.S. automotive companies on their home ground, Cho increasingly marketed Toyota Motor Corporation USA as an American company. In June 2003 he promoted James Press to be sales and marketing manager and Gary Convis to be in charge of manufacturing; the presence of two American gaijin—a derogatory Japanese term for foreigners—among Toyota's top executives was unprecedented. Cho had no problem with the hiring of these gaijin, considered it to be a wise business strategy; he noted in Fortune, "Toyota has been globalized step by step. We are trying to introduce American elements into the company " (December 8, 2003). Cho began to Americanize the Toyota management system as well, although Convis and Press were not the ones in charge of Toyota's American branch. That role fell to the blunt-spoken Yoshi Inaba, a marketer, not an engineer; under Inaba, the American Toyota was slowly moving away from consensus management and toward more rapid decision-making. Cho continued to dedicate himself to the principles of lean production and kaizen. In order for the long-term goals that the company had set to be accomplished, the TPS would have to become ever more nimble and efficient. While Cho and his company were well ahead of most of the competition, they refused to become complacent. Cho knew that in the 21st century consumer wants would be shifting more rapidly than ever; Toyota would need to be able to shift just as rapidly to meet those wants. Cho gave a high priority to the application of Information Technology in upgrading the TPS. New models could be developed and their production processes computer generated at the very same time. By 2004 some Toyota plants were using a new technique that allowed them to hold vehicle bodies on assembly lines with one rather than three supports. The streamlined Global Body Line production process made it possible to switch from one model to another on a single line, permitting Cho to place more robots at any given line location. This would give Toyota an enormous advantage over less flexible competitors who would constantly have to retool or shift production to other plants to meet customer demand. Through his example of implementing selective Americanization while remaining deeply Japanese, Cho led the way to a new and revived Japanese management/production model. In contrast to the business writers of the 1990s, scores of whom were pronouncing the death of that Japanese model, the ongoing success of Cho inspired the 2004 book by Jeffrey K. Liker lauding The Toyota Way. Cho has indeed set an exemplary example of management skills.