Toyota Production System Research Paper Sample

Taiichi Ohno was a symbol of Japan’s manufacturing development after World War II. At first, he was working at Toyota Automatic Loom Works. It was sold to the Platt Brothers and the Toyoda family decided to build a company from the sale’s money and shifted to manufacturing motor cars where they hired Ohno as a production engineer. As their production was way below compared to the Detroit industry and as his boss told him that they must catch up, he decided that they must remove efficiency and wastefulness in the part of the production process. These traits became the core idea for Toyota Production System (TPS) (Guru: Taiichi n.p.).
All the praises should not go to Ohno alone, there was Eiji Toyoda. He was the president, later became the chairman, of Toyota Motor, at a span of 25 years. He is the one that pushed his company to produce cars outside Japan, specifically in the United States. Without him, the ideas of kanban, kaizen, muda, and keiretsu and acronyms like JIT (Just-in-time), TQC (total quality control), ZD (zero defects), and Toyota Production System will not be known to the world (Keller n.p.).
Together, they formed the Toyota Production System (TPS). It was formed by two pillars as proposed by Mr. Ohno, JIT (just-in-time) and Jidoka (autonomation). JIT requires that there would be no queuing time on jobs or materials and Jidoka relieves workers on continuously checking on machines as it can continuously work. These concepts where used to achieved better cost-effectiveness. Lastly, it was in the days where the competition are stiff in manufacturing automobiles inside and outside Japan that they have invented the system (Mok n.p.). Honda and Nissan were their competitors inside Japan and the likes of GM, Ford, and Chrysler was their competition outside Japan specifically in the United States (Spear et al. n.p.).

Works Cited:

Keller, Maryann. “The Legacy of Eiji Toyoda.” Remembrance, 2013. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.
Mok, James. “Using Real-Time Intelligence to Enhance Lean Manufacturing.” Manufacturing Transformation, 2013. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.
Spear, Steven and Bowen, H. Kent. “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System.” Harvar Business Review. 1999. Web. 30 Jan. 2015
“Guru: Taiichi Ohno.” The Economist, 2009. Web. 30 Jan. 2015