Webinar: The Work of a Chief Engineer

A conversation with Jim Morgan and John Shook

For about 75 years, the chief engineer has stood at the center of how Toyota develops products. The CE carries full responsibility for whether a vehicle succeeds or fails, yet holds almost no formal authority over the thousands of engineers, designers, planners, and suppliers who bring it to life. How that actually works has stayed mostly hidden from the outside world.

A new book changes that. The Work of a Chief Engineer: Inside Toyota’s Revolutionary Product Development System is the first account in English written by someone who held the job. Naoto Kitagawa served as chief engineer for the Camry, Avalon, Solara, bB, and many other vehicles across more than 30 years at Toyota, then went on to lead planning for Lexus and serve as an executive at Daihatsu.

Jim Morgan and John Shook wrote the book’s foreword. In this session they will share what Kitagawa reveals and why it matters for anyone responsible for developing products, then take your questions live. Come with them ready. They will cover:

• How a chief engineer builds a product concept from direct customer insight instead of market data. Kitagawa developed the youth-focused bB by going to the places young buyers gathered and watching them, not by running focus groups.
• The CE concept document, one of the least understood mechanisms in Toyota’s system, and how it aligns functional departments behind a single vision.
• The bB program’s zero-prototype development, and what it asked every downstream team to trust.
• Why Toyota’s product development system deserves the same practitioner attention long given to the Toyota Production System.

Stay to the end. We will draw a live attendee to receive a free book.

Who should attend

Product development and engineering leaders, R&D and program managers, and anyone building or reforming a product development system. Readers of Designing the Future and The Toyota Product Development System, and LPPD practitioners, will find the most direct line to their own work.