History of Toyota’s Production Method
Toyota’s production method and system has been fine-tuned over generations. Its roots have been drawn from its philosophy of “the complete elimination of all waste” which causes all aspects of their production to be in pursuit of the most efficient ways to reduce waste. This philosophy has been traced back to Sakichi Toyoda’s automatic loom which was developed in 1924. The TPS has evolved through many years of trial and error to improve efficiency based on the Just-in-Time (meaning “Making only what is needed, only when it is needed, and only in the amount that it is needed.”) concept created and developed by Kiichiro Toyoda, the founder and second president of Toyota Motor Corporation. Waste was seen as excess inventory in some cases, irrelevant processing steps in other cases, as well as defective products too. All these “waste” elements interlinked with each other to create more waste, which eventually impacted on the corporation itself.
The automatic loom invented by Sakichi Toyoda didn’t just only automated work which used to be performed manually but also built the capability to make judgements into the machine itself. In turn this eliminated both defective products and the associated wasteful practices. Sakichi successfully succeeded in tremendously improving both productivity and work efficiency. Kiichiro Toyoda inherited this philosophy and set out to realise his belief that “the ideal conditions for making things are created when machines, facilities, and people work together to add value without generating any waste.” He developed methodologies and techniques for eliminating waste between operations between both lines and processes. The result was the Just-in-Time method which was helped by Taiichi Ohno, who created the basic framework for the Just-in-Time method. By ensuring thorough implementation of jidoka