Toyota = Abundance of rice

[cali yaris]

There is a book about how they became the #1 car company in the world.

YarisHilton should read it.

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by eTiMaGo

Yep, but in this case that's to do with the limitations of their language, if there's no phonetic "DZ" kinda sound in Japanese, they have to approximate with the closest native sound. Same reason why it took me years to pronounce "the" properly (no TH sound in French)

seeing KARAOKE and pronouncing it KARI-OKIE is just... er...

....seems kind of natural, ne c'est pas?

French is a great language in which to sneer or curse. It was also once the scientific language of Europe, especially at the turn of the 20th century, when Poincare and others were leaders in Math and Physics. I have two years of University French and two years of Spanish. The two together in one head with marginal fluency in both can cause amazing gaffes.

Gene

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by cali yaris

There is a book about how they became the #1 car company in the world.

YarisHilton should read it.

Actually there are several books on Toyota and their methods. The philosophy that they use make perfectionism almost respectable.

Gene

[cali yaris]

their notion of "kaizen", where everyone is encouraged to contribute to improvement, is something I instituted in my own company.

[eTiMaGo]

Originally Posted by GeneW

I have two years of University French and two years of Spanish. The two together in one head with marginal fluency in both can cause amazing gaffes.

Gene

Haha yes I know what you mean, when I went to Italy last month and tried to use whatever limited vocabulary I had, I subconsciously fell back to trying to speak Thai

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by cali yaris

their notion of "kaizen", where everyone is encouraged to contribute to improvement, is something I instituted in my own company.

Kaizen is wonderful if it's promoted fairly and uniformly. Toyota has a MINIMUM QUOTA of suggestions, I think it's one every two weeks, for every worker.

Some companies make a mess out of Kaizen. One firm I once worked for used to demand a cost/benefit analysis of each suggestion. Another firm refused to give credit unless the suggestion netted the firm at least $1,000,000 profit per year. One group of pirates, a "name" manufacturer based in Japan, sometimes would steal suggestions from employees, develop them and then give the prize to the lead engineer.

The saddest part of suggestions is that really radical and market shaking suggestions will be the first ones tossed out as "useless". We keep hearing all sorts of asinine predictions by CEOs (like Watson of IBM claiming that there might be a market for five computers in the entire world) and must realize that sometimes if you want something new you have to go do it yourself.

Gene

[TLyttle]

Nothing new regarding suggestions. Quite a few firms profited handsomely from some of my suggestions, and they weren't Japanese. Not much you can do about it, just eat it....

And no one in North America is interested in market-shaking, no matter what the discipline. I spent a lot of time in the handicap transport business, a design for a tiedown system that we developed was, as you say, useless. 25+ years later, it is still superior to any other existing system, but no one wants to talk to me about it, unless I give over the patents for free. I ain't gonna make a pile of cash because I wasn't looking for the money in the first place, but I won't make some other clown rich, either.

[YarisPR]

Here in P.R. Hondas = Abundance of Rice!!!

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by eTiMaGo

Haha yes I know what you mean, when I went to Italy last month and tried to use whatever limited vocabulary I had, I subconsciously fell back to trying to speak Thai

Probably confused the hell out of the poor things. Some of the northerners I've met can speak French. Probably not a lot of them who can speak Thai.

Gene

[cali yaris]

LOL @ the survey results.

[anonymous user]

I didn't vote, but my last name means middle of ricefield. "naka" middle Ta or da= rice.

[anonymous user]

One more thing, mazda actually is a japanese last name, came from Matsuda. Same has honda, and toyota.

I don't know about nissan, i'mma bout to goggle it right now.

[highwaypass]

how about "toyo tyre"

[Crims0n5]

Originally Posted by *MAD DOG*

I was looking for spare parts online on this website http://www.findapart.com.au/toyota_parts.php and i found this quote about Toyota.



So in Japanese Toyota means abundance of rice?

Is this why people call Toyota's rice?

People call Toyota's (or any car for that matter) rice because of all the stupid crap people put on them. Just today at work I saw a Tercel on 24 inch rims, a big kanji character painted on the hood, with an eBay wing that was somehow mounted upside down.

All I could think was "Oh you poor Toyota..."