Toyota Case study EN

Since the very beginning Toyota has one main goal – to contribute to social development and advancement. In 1918 Sakichi Toyoda founded an enterprise which manufactured automatic looms. These devices made life and work easier for many people. In 1933 his son, Kiichiro, created a separate automotive section of the company, which was transformed into Toyota Motor Co., Ltd. 4 years later. The following year the first production lines started. Since then, Toyota has been continuously setting new trends in the automotive sector and coming up with innovative solutions. In 2018 Toyota filed more than 2.5 thousand patent application on the American market alone. This is how it secured the position of the innovation leader in the automotive industry and came 7 th in the world, preceded only by companies from the sector of electronics and new technology. The number of innovations affects the goodwill of Toyota. For many years now it has been one of the most valuable brands in the world and definitely number one among car manufacturers. Every person who starts their collaboration with any Toyota facility, office or showroom first becomes familiar with the company creed. The document ti- tled Toyota Precepts was developed 85 years ago. It includes five points that aptly summarise the values that became the signpost for Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of the brand, who used these guiding principles in his private and professional life. In order to become part of Toyota – be it as an employee or business partner – you need to understand those principles first, because this is what all the company operations are based on. That’s why the first step towards the collaboration of Nowy Styl with the Austrian branch of the company was becoming familiar with the precepts. We discussed them with the Toyota team: we asked the staff about how they worked, we watched advertising materials and analysed the content addressed to the customers. We have also probed the history of the brand, including the circumstances in which all the revolutionary ideas originated, which have made the company the global innovation leader . We browsed the availa- ble sources – specialist literature or the Internet – in search for the explana- tion of the Toyota phenomenon. And we made all this effort in order to learn as much as possible about the brand. In the end, in order to express our respect for the company, we came to the conclusion that the new workplace should be created in line with the princi- ples outlined by Sakichi Toyoda. This was the basis for arranging the space to the best of our knowledge and experience in ergonomics and office furniture design – the two areas we prioritise and specialise in. Since Nowy Styl has a local, vibrant branch in Vienna, we had a chance to include the local context in our project and streamline our ideas to fit in with the character of the country, city, district and even the very building and floor where the new Toyota office was located. Every little detail was signif- icant in this project. On the left: vision of the futuristic, experimental LF-30 Electrified Lexus model, whose prototype was presented in 2019 (source: Lexus). On top: Twin Towers in Vienna, where the Austrian Toyota headquarters is located. Innovation leader イノベーションリーダー 03