Jeffrey K. Liker

Dr. Jeffrey K. Liker is Professor Emeritus of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan and President of Liker Lean Advisors. He is author of the international best-seller, The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer, 2004 (26 languages, over 1 million copies sold), and has coauthored nine other books about Toyota including The Toyota Way to Service Excellence (2016), Designing the Future (2018), and The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership. His articles and books have won thirteen Shingo Prizes for Research Excellence. Recently he has collaborated with Mike Rother to study and write about Toyota Kata. In 2012 he was inducted into the Association of Manufacturing Excellence Hall of Fame and in 2016 inducted into the Shingo Academy. He plays golf, watches football and basketball, and resumed learning classical guitar after a thirty year break. His wife Deb and daughter Emma support his writing and his son Jesse is his toughest critic and best editor.