About TOYOTA L&F Co., Ltd.
A leader in Japan’s logistics industry with deep, hands-on expertise
Founded in 1964, TOYOTA L&F Co., Ltd. focuses on selling and maintaining forklifts. Headquartered in Shinagawa City, Tokyo, the company operates nine sales offices across the region. Its mission is to solve customers’ logistics challenges through on-site inspections, hands-on improvement proposals, and solutions tailored to each operation.
The challenge
Rising competition and outdated communication slowed frontline execution
TOYOTA L&F has long grown by prioritizing high sales volume, earning a 55% share of the Japanese market. But as competition intensified, the company’s reliance on after-sales services, previously its main profit engine, began to reach its limits.
Before embarking on a company-wide digital transformation (DX), internal communication relied heavily on paper documents, emails, phone calls, and meetings. Important information often stalled at the management level, slowing frontline execution and making it harder for teams to stay aligned.
How TOYOTA L&F works better with Slack
Slack sparks a shift to faster, more transparent, frontline-led communication
Facing a shifting market, President & Representative Director Takashi Ogura set a bold new direction: moving from quantity to quality, and building deeper relationships with customers and the community.
As part of this transformation, he introduced Slack to streamline how work starts and flows, shifting communication from a top-down model to one driven by frontline employees.
Faster, easier communication
The impact of Slack was immediate. Phone calls from head office — once constant — now happen far less frequently, often not even once a day. With asynchronous communication now the norm, employees access the information they need, when they need it.
Slack also speeds up day-to-day communication. By eliminating email tasks like creating subject lines, selecting recipients, and forwarding messages (and by reducing wait times for answers), the company saved 5,618 hours in routine communication in 2024.
Open channels encourage friendlier exchanges and more frequent knowledge-sharing. Tacit expertise that once lived only in individuals’ heads is now visible and accessible across teams. The growing habit of “Just Slack it” reflects a real cultural shift.
Accelerating collaboration with the sales team
Shifting from a quantity-driven model to a quality-driven one required freeing up more time for sales to strengthen customer relationships. To make this possible, automation in Slack plays a central role.
For example, the vehicle-ordering process is now managed in a dedicated Slack channel using workflow automation. Checklists and file attachments make progress visible across departments, and previously informal or inconsistent steps are now standardized. This has significantly improved efficiency and clarity. By automating repetitive tasks through Slack workflows, employees can spend more time on high-value work.
What’s next
Driving a culture of shared information and faster decisions
Digital transformation has brought not only efficiency gains but also a meaningful cultural shift. Decision-making is faster than ever. With information shared in Slack beforehand, time spent in routine meetings has been cut in half, and pre-briefing sessions are no longer needed, letting teams focus directly on the issues at hand.
Slack has also contributed to lowering employee turnover. TOYOTA L&F now maintains a 0% turnover rate among employees with three years or less at the company. New hires quickly adopt Slack, and the platform sparks more active internal communication, including cross-department meetups and clubs.
President Ogura notes the importance of widely shared information, emphasizing that companies thrive when employees across the organization can access what they need. As work evolves and information moves faster than ever, he believes the real advantage no longer comes from simply having information, but from ensuring everyone can use it.
Slack is helping TOYOTA L&F create a workplace where information is accessible to everyone, especially frontline teams, and where collective knowledge fuels future growth.
