Obeya

Obeya - Japanese for "large room" or "war room" - describes a form of project management at Toyota and is part of the Toyota production system and thus a component of lean management or lean production . During product and process development, all people involved in planning are united in a 'large room' in order to achieve the fastest communication and the shortest possible decision-making paths. This eliminates the classic barriers that have developed over time due to "departmental thinking". In a way, one can even speak of an expansion of the team spirit on an administrative level. At Toyota, this means that vehicle development has become possible in significantly less than 20 months (for comparison: the average for other automobile manufacturers is 36 months).