Keynote from Alan weir, recently retired from Toyota UK, at Gemba Summit 2025
Alan Weir, recently retired from Toyota UK after nearly 34 years with the company, delivered a deeply personal and insightful keynote at Gemba Summit 2025.
Speaking in Belfast’s magnificent Titanic building held special significance for Alan, who grew up locally in North Belfast, where his friends and family worked in the shipyards and docks.
His journey from working the dodgems at Belfast Zoo to serving as Deputy Managing Director responsible for all production operations at one of Toyota’s most efficient plants globally provided a unique perspective on what truly makes lean manufacturing work.
Throughout his presentation, Alan emphasized that Toyota UK’s success – rolling a car off the line every 130 seconds with 2,500 employees – isn’t primarily about automation or technology. It’s about people. Drawing on Toyota’s core principles, values, and mission that weren’t even written down until 2001, Alan shared how the company’s culture of developing people first creates extraordinary results. Through powerful video testimonials from team members and his own experiences, he demonstrated how Toyota’s approach to leadership at the Gemba – from QC circles that turn every employee into a problem solver, to the Andon system that empowers anyone to stop the line – creates a manufacturing environment where continuous improvement isn’t just a program, but a way of life embedded in every team member.
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Key takeaways
1. Challenge and Support Through QC Circles
Alan showcased how Toyota develops every team member into a problem solver through Quality Control circles. In one powerful video testimonial, a team member described how participating in QC circles built confidence not just in problem-solving, but in presenting and speaking – skills that transferred to every aspect of life.
With 2,500 people in the organization, Alan emphasized the power of having 2,500 problem solvers rather than relying on a few managers or engineers to identify and fix issues.
This systematic approach to developing people’s capabilities ensures that improvement happens at every level, every day.
2. Genchi Genbutsu – Go and See for Yourself
Alan demonstrated Toyota’s commitment to understanding facts at the source by blocking out the first two hours of every day for Gemba walks. Starting around 7 a.m., these two hours were sacrosanct – dedicated to going to the shop floor to understand real facts, not reading reports or viewing PowerPoint presentations.
Whether investigating problems from the previous night shift or addressing startup issues on the current shift, Alan insisted on seeing machine problems, examining parts, and reviewing data directly at the source. This was followed by a 15-minute morning production meeting (Asaka meeting) that took place on the shop floor, not in a fancy boardroom, covering safety, quality, operation rate, and production issues in a short, focused format.
3. The Power of Andon and Mutual Trust
Every single person at Toyota has the power to pull the Andon cord and stop the line. Alan shared video of this system in action: a team member fitting a back door trim finds a problem, pulls the Andon, and the team leader responds immediately. Critically, the team leader then releases the Andon and lets the team member carry on with standardized work while the leader fixes the problem.
The abnormality is tracked and logged for later analysis. But the most important part comes next – the team leader goes back to the member and thanks them for raising the problem. At Toyota, they thank people for pulling the Andon. The system goes off hundreds, if not thousands, of times every shift, and if the music isn’t playing, that’s actually a problem. The amount of analysis done to understand the causes of Andon calls is phenomenal.
4. Thoughtful Leadership Solves Real Problems
Alan shared a detailed example of addressing maintenance turnover, which had reached 30-31 members leaving each year – a huge problem given that it’s nearly impossible to hire good maintenance members in England, and Toyota’s own academy takes four years to develop them. Rather than accepting surface-level complaints about pay or shifts at face value, they spoke in detail with maintenance members and created focus groups to understand the real problems: working environment, development, career progression, shifts, and overtime.
They set up cross-divisional working groups and a maintenance committee, but the real gem was Alan’s commitment to spend one hour per week on the shop floor hearing firsthand from maintenance apprentices through to people with 30 years of experience about their progress. He relentlessly followed up for the best part of two years, and the results were dramatic – turnover wasn’t reduced by chance, but through thoughtful leadership that challenged beliefs and energized others to take responsibility.
5. Take Control of Your Diary
One of Alan’s most practical pieces of advice was about diary management. Without deliberately structuring his schedule around Gemba time, finance, HR, and other departments would have filled every slot, leaving no time for the most important work – being at the Gemba.
He structured his entire diary around Gemba walks and various meetings, ensuring that everything else came second to being on the shop floor understanding the actual work and supporting his team.
6. First We Build People, Then We Build Cars
Alan concluded with words from Toyota’s previous Honorary Chairman: “First we build people, then we build cars.”
Despite Toyota UK being one of the most efficient car factories in the Toyota world (and therefore globally), with high levels of automation visible throughout the press shop, body shop, paint shop, and assembly operations, the real competitive advantage isn’t the technology.
It’s the systematic development of people and processes, and the cultivation of future leaders. Toyota’s culture is fundamentally a commitment to developing every person, and that commitment – more than any robot or automated system – is what drives their world-class performance.
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