My Role: KATA
What is Toyota Kata?
Toyota has excelled as a company thanks in large part to their culture of scientific thinking and behaviors. Thanks to the research by Mike Rother in the book Toyota Kata, you can now develop these same skills for yourself and your organization. How? By practicing the Improvement Kata and Coaching Kata. These skills are great practice routines for developing your people, from top to bottom, and across business units.
Learning Loop
The Toyota Kata Learning Loop takes you from basic awareness and knowledge through skill development and mastery with the annual Kata Summit (aka KataCon) in North America and TWI & Kata Summit Europe as key stopping points.
The strength of a company is the improvement capability of all the people. - Mike Rother
FOUNDATIONAL KNOWLEDGE
- Access our free resources to begin your learning journey.
- Online Toyota Kata Knowledge Certification Course
- “What Is” Toyota Kata Video
- What is Toyota Kata About Video?
- Mike Rother’s Website
ADVANCING KNOWLEDGE
- Attend the Kata Summit in North America or the TWI & Kata Summit in Europe and learn from other Kata practitioners.
SKILL DEVELOPMENT
- Hands-on, 10-Hour open enrollment SkillPoint for Toyota Kata Workshop
COACHING DEVELOPMENT
- From the TWI Institute: Toyota Kata 40-hour Train-the-trainer.
MASTERY
- Learn by doing, sustained over time.
UPCOMING EVENTS RELATED TO KATA
Check out what's coming up!
HELPFUL RESOURCES
KATA Resources
Toyota Kata – 4 Lessons Learned from the President of New Hampshire Industries by John Batten
Conducting Workplace Experiments by Oscar Roche
Toyota Kata Strengthens the Application of A3 by Gene Kaschak and Oscar Roche
Leadership Development Through Toyota Kata by Sam Wagner
The Meta-Patterns of Innovation by Mark Rosenthal
The Improvement Kata – A Way of Developing Scientific Thinking to Create an Agile Mindset by Oscar Roche
Toyota Kata Illustrates Skill and “Need for Change” Obstacles by Oscar Roche and Mike Withka
Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results by Mike Rother
The Toyota Kata Practice Guide: Practicing Scientific Thinking Skills for Superior Results in 20 Minutes a Day by Mike Rother
Toyota Kata Culture: Building Organizational Capability and Mindset Through Kata Coaching by Mike Rother and Gerd Aulinger
The Toyota Kata Memory Jogger Spiral-bound
Creating an Effective Management System by Patrick Graupp, Skip Steward, and Brad Parsons
The 7 Kata: Toyota Kata, TWI, and Lean Training by Conrad Soltero and Patrice Boutier
KATA Articles
Here are our recent articles related to KATA.
The history of flow production is long and precedes Toyota and its great work in this area. Ford’s Highland Park Plant is a source and also the writings of Alexander Hamilton Church in 1910! Some review of AH Church sounds more like contemporary descriptions, not something from over 100 years ago.
