Douglas N. Formby, Sr., Executive Consultant
Doug has invested the past 34 years of his professional career in key executive assignments across Toyota’s North American sales, distribution and logistics, and manufacturing operations. Over the past twelve years, Doug served in Toyota’s manufacturing operations at both their N.A. manufacturing headquarters and several of their N.A. vehicle manufacturing plants. In the 22 years prior, Doug lead various operational business units at Toyota’s sales HQ, and multiple field locations.
Most recently, Doug served as Vice President and Officer of Production Control and Administration for Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing of N.A., with primary responsibility for the Mississippi Plant operations. Prior to his Mississippi assignment, he lead the Production Control Division at Toyota’s North American Manufacturing Headquarters in Erlanger, Ky., and their North American Production Support Division in Georgetown, KY where his team provided just in time training and development for all 13 of Toyota’s manufacturing plants in North America. Some recent accomplishments with Toyota include:
- Led North America wide problem solving initiative which resulted in improved on time delivery (OTD) performance from 91.2% to 99.1% across all vehicle manufacturing plants
- Led A. wide collaborative effort between sales & manufacturing to align and strengthen the production planning process resulting in: (1) An 8% point increase in sales velocity; (2) With a leaner days supply inventory (38 d/s vs. 41 d/s); and (3) an 11% increase in enterprise wide profit per vehicle.
- Led plant wide cost reduction efforts, which improved TMMI’s breakeven from 94% capacity utilization to 70% from ‘08 – ‘10. Plant has been operating in excess of 105% capacity utilization since
- Led Toyota’s North American Production Support Center in establishing training “Dojos” at each manufacturing facility where TPS, Problem Solving, QC Circles, and driving hoshin kanri management from the floor up through application of Floor Management Development Systems (FMDS) capabilities were enhanced across N.A.
Throughout Doug’s career he has been passionate about the training and development of all team members. His unique experience and training across both sales and manufacturing, in North America (US, Canada & Mexico) and Asia (Japan, Taiwan, China, and Thailand) have equipped him with a wide breadth and depth of knowledge of TPS principles taught and applied across numerous different cultures. Those experiences, combined with his end to end knowledge of the entire supply chain, and unique capability to view opportunities through a total systems approach, enabled Doug to effectively lead Toyota’s North American Production Support Center. That group was responsible for ongoing training and certification for all of Toyota’s manufacturing team members, as well as their manufacturing management development program. Additionally, he was the first executive globally to effectively implement Toyota’s Organization Management & Development System (OMDS) in an administrative environment across the Production Control Division to realize breakthrough results in safety, quality, productivity, cost and people development.
Doug retired from Toyota in June of 2014 and joined Lean Consulting Associates where he is sharing his Lean expertise and servant leadership style with other organizations to deliver operational excellence across their value chain.