2 ms·

This article does nothing to explain why software engineering is more tricky for toyota, other than saying that they're forced to release models faster (industr

This article does nothing to explain why software engineering is more tricky for toyota, other than saying that they're forced to release models faster (industry-wide problem), and a set of scare quotes around the word engineer when referring to software guys... I'm not in the states right now (and the economist is mostly, but not entirely, written in the UK, not sure about economist online) but my sense is that there is a lot of hype in the states, and now I assume the UK, about the Toyota problems without a lot of substance to the reporting about what the actual issues are. If anyone has found a good website/blog/mainstream article that explains the issues clearly, i'd love to read them.

rm-rf 17y ago
I didn't think that the article was saying that software engineering is more difficult for Toyota than it is for other care makers, but rather that software engineering doesn't bring with it the 60 years of QA knowledge and process that mechanical engineering has in the Japanese auto industry, and that the lessons of those 50 years that make mechanical engineering so well refined are not readily transferred over to software engineering. Having said that, I didn't think that Toyota's problems were strictly software related.
- pzarecta 17y ago
  That's funny since the Toyota Production System is the inspiration for today's Lean Development Practices. Apparently, someone else extended those 60 years of learning into software development but didn't tell Toyota about it.