The Employee Who Saved His Team Three Hours a Day by Moving a Lane

It started with a driver’s idea — and a willingness to speak up about it.

Abdullah Osman Abdi worked as a driver at the Abdul Latif Jameel Motors Toyota showroom and service center on Madinah Road in Jeddah. His job involved moving customer vehicles at the central stock yard. Every day, he and his colleagues walked more than 150 meters between their dedicated lanes and the main exit gate — a round trip that cost 10 to 15 minutes per car, in the heat of a Saudi summer.

With 20 to 40 vehicles moving each day, the cumulative time loss across the team ran into hours. Abdullah noticed that lanes closer to the exit gate sat unused. He raised it with his manager, Abdulaziz Salah Atarji, the sales manager at the branch. Atarji brought the idea to the management of the National Distribution Center in Al Khomrah. The lanes were reassigned.

“What used to take three to four hours is now being done in 15 minutes,” Abdullah said. “It was a special day when Mr Hassan Jameel met me. I was overwhelmed and very happy, and I feel very much appreciated.”

The story is straightforward, but that is precisely the point. Kaizen — the continuous improvement philosophy that Abdul Latif Jameel adopted from its decades-long partnership with Toyota — does not depend on executives identifying problems from above. It depends on the people closest to the work finding the waste and doing something about it.

Hassan Jameel, vice chairman of Saudi Arabia for Abdul Latif Jameel, personally met Abdullah to recognize the contribution. That gesture matters as much as the process change itself. The philosophy only sustains if people at every level believe their observations are taken seriously and that acting on them will be acknowledged rather than ignored.

Abdul Latif Jameel Motors runs an internal program called Best in Town, built on the Toyota kaizen framework, with teams across multiple countries working to surface and implement improvements. More than 150 delegates gathered for a regional Best in Town conference in Saudi Arabia in 2023. Abdullah’s story — an individual contributor changing a physical process — is exactly what the program is designed to encourage.

Beyond its service operations, Abdul Latif Jameel Motors has expanded its presence in Saudi public life through a platinum sponsorship of the Saudi Pro League, reflecting a company identity that extends well beyond the showroom floor.