LESSONS FROM TOYOTA'S LONG DRIVE

Last December the Toyota Motor Corporation officially forecast that it would sell 9.34 million cars in 2007 - which could make it the world's largest automaker. However, rapid growth and globalization have created many pressures for the company, and the strain of success is already beginning to show. In an interview, Toyota's president, Katsuaki Watanabe, talks about the strategies being developed to cope in the future. For Watanabe, being number one means "being the best in the world in terms of quality." If Toyota's quality continues to improve, he says, volume and revenues will follow. If problems arise from overstretching, he wants them made visible, because then his people will "rack their brains" to solve them - and if that means postponing growth, so be it. Toyota's long-term strategy involves developing both global and regional car models in order to compete worldwide with a full line of products. Watanabe aims to achieve his goals through a combination of kaizen ("continuous improvement") and kakushin ("radical innovation").