Giving Wings to Her Team (PDF)

Tilo Schwarz is a leadership coach, former plant manager and co-founder of the Campus for Leaders at the University of Applied Science Ansbach. He helps managers to successfully lead change and empower their teams for improvement, adaptiveness, and superior results. During his time as a plant manager at a renowned German power-tool manufacturer, he started practicing Toyota Kata with his management team as part of Mike Rother's groundbreaking research in 2006. By doing so, Tilo and his team established continuous improvement as a daily routine throughout all processes and areas of the plant. That led to winning the A. T. Kearny operational excellence competition "Factory of the Year" and a WHU/INSEAD Industrial Excellence Award. Tilo is the author of several books on coaching and Toyota Kata.

Jeffrey K. Liker is Professor Emeritus, Industrial and Operations Engineering at The University of Michigan and President of Liker Lean Advisors, LLC. He is the author of the best-selling book, The Toyota Way, Second Edition, and has coauthored nine other books about Toyota including The Toyota Way to Service Excellence and The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership. His graphic novel with Eduardo Lander and Tom Root tells the story of lean transformation at a mail-order company: Lean in a High-Variability Business. A more compact graphic novel, Engaging the Team at Zingerman's Mail Order, illustrates how Kata unleashed the creativity of their team. His articles and books have won thirteen Shingo Prizes for Research Excellence. He was inducted into the Association of Manufacturing Excellence Hall of Fame and the Shingo Academy.