Toyota: Ohno’s Toyota Production System

Taiichi Ohno was never CEO of Toyota—rather he was part of dual-leadership teams—but his pioneering version of ‘lean’ production made significant contributions to Toyota’s success and to global manufacturing. The chapter’s first section also describes the pioneering contribution of Toyota founder, Kiichiro Toyoda, who invented the notion of just-in-time production in the 1930s. In the 1950s–60s Ohno’s emphasis on innovative adaptation—his key rational method—to Japan’s distinctive car market and factory environments would lead to a new production system. It included the internationally famous ‘just-in-time’, ‘continuous flow’, and Kanban information-system aspects of his production system. Ohno also used both strategic and quantitative calculation, particularly in his grand strategy of reducing cost/waste in production. The final section on ‘Toyotaism versus Fordism’ echoes Chapter 2’s and describes a rivalry between the American and Japanese production systems.