TOYOTA Production System

The Toyota Production System (TPS) is an integrated socio-technical system,

developed by Toyota that comprises its management philosophy and practices. The
TPS organizes manufacturing and logistics for the automobile manufacturer,
including interaction with suppliers and customers. The system is a major
precursor of the more generic "lean manufacturing". Taiichi Ohno and Eiji Toyoda,
Japanese industrial engineers, developed the system between 1948 and 1975.[1]
Originally called "just-in-time production", it builds on the approach created by the
founder of Toyota, Sakichi Toyoda, his son Kiichiro Toyoda, and the
engineer Taiichi Ohno. The principles underlying the TPS are embodied in The
Toyota Way.

Goals Edit
The main objectives of the TPS are to design out overburden and inconsistency,
and to eliminate waste. The most significant effects on process value delivery are
achieved by designing a process capable of delivering the required results
smoothly; by designing out "mura" (inconsistency). It is also crucial to ensure that
the process is as flexible as necessary without stress or "muri" (overburden) since
this generates "muda" (waste). Finally the tactical improvements of waste
reduction or the elimination of muda are very valuable. There are eight kinds of
muda that are addressed in the TPS
1. Waste of overproduction (largest waste)
2. Waste of time on hand (waiting)
3. Waste of transportation
4. Waste of processing itself
5. Waste of stock at hand
6. Waste of movement
7. Waste of making defective products
8. Waste of underutilized workers

The elimination of waste has come to dominate the thinking of many when they
look at the effects of the TPS because it is the most familiar of the three to
implement. In the TPS many initiatives are triggered by inconsistency or over-run
reduction which drives out waste without specific focus on its reduction.
Toyota Motor Corporation published an official description of TPS for the first
time in 1992; this booklet was revised in 1998.[3] In the foreword it was said: "The
TPS is a framework for conserving resources by eliminating waste. People who
participate in the system learn to identify expenditures of material, effort and time
that do not generate value for customers and furthermore we have, avoid a 'how-to'
approach. The booklet is not a manual. Rather it is an overview of the concepts that
underlie our production system. It is a reminder that lasting gains in productivity
and quality are possible whenever and wherever management and employees are
united in a commitment to positive change". TPS is grounded on two main
conceptual pillars:
1. Just-in-time meaning "Making only what is needed, only when it is needed, and
only in the amount that is needed"
2. Jidoka (Autonomation) meaning "Automation with a human touch"

Toyota has developed various tools to transfer these concepts into practice and
apply them to specific requirements and conditions in the company and business.

This system, more than any other aspect of the company, is responsible for having
made Toyota the company it is today. Toyota has long been recognized as a leader
in the automotive manufacturing and production industry.
Industrial engineering is the wider science behind TPS.
It is a myth that "Toyota received their inspiration for the system, not from the
American automotive industry (at that time the world's largest by far), but from
visiting a supermarket". The idea of just-in-time production was originated
by Kiichiro Toyoda, founder of Toyota. The question was how to implement the
idea. In reading descriptions of American supermarkets, Ohno saw the supermarket
as the model for what he was trying to accomplish in the factory. A customer in a
supermarket takes the desired amount of goods off the shelf and purchases them.
The store restocks the shelf with enough new product to fill up the shelf space.
Similarly, a work-center that needed parts would go to a "store shelf" (the
inventory storage point) for the particular part and "buy" (withdraw) the quantity it
needed, and the "shelf" would be "restocked" by the work-center that produced the
part, making only enough to replace the inventory that had been withdrawn.
While low inventory levels are a key outcome of the Toyota Production System, an
important element of the philosophy behind its system is to work intelligently and
eliminate waste so that only minimal inventory is needed. Many Western
businesses, having observed Toyota's factories, set out to attack high inventory
levels directly without understanding what made these reductions possible. The act
of imitating without understanding the underlying concept or motivation may have
led to the failure of those projects.