Leadership of Toyota Motor Corporation

There are no executive needs to convince that Toyota Motor Corporation has now become
one of the world’s greatest company. This company has been an icon in operational excellence
in automotive industry in last decades. Most of Toyota’s success comes from its excellent quality
reputation as well as its efficient management and operational system which is named “Toyota
Production System (TPS)”. This unorthodox system enables Toyota manufacturing high quality
automobiles at the lowest cost and producing the products quickly.
Taiichi Ohno was a Japanese industrial engineer and businessman. He is considered as the
father of the Toyota Producing System (TPS), which now become Lean Manufacturing in the US.
Ohno never became a CEO-level leader in Toyota but his production innovations made a notable
contribution to the corporation’s rapid development in 1960s.
Taiichi Ohno worked as a machine shop manager for Toyoda Group Automotive Operation
after the end of the second world war. Ohno and his team experienced drastic material shortages
because of the war. Ohno noticed that inefficiency and wastefulness are the main reason causing
Toyota’s productivity lower than other foreign industries. Therefore, he set out to eliminate the
problems in the part of the production process he is responsible for. This had become the core
of the TPS that they eventually developed between 1948 and 1975.
Ohno left for United States to visit their automobiles plants. Ohno was impressed by the
services offered by the supermarket when he stayed at US. He realized that Japan was lack of
self-service store at that time. He admired those supermarkets supplied goods in a simple,
convenience and effective way.
The supermarkets aroused Ohno to describe his production system similar to the American
supermarkets. Each production line displayed particular output to choose from and each line
became the consumers for the preceding line. Following line would come for particular items and
preceding line would produce only particular items. Every preceding line would come out with
different products. A huge system which is driven by the needs of the following lines was formed
in this format. Ohno soon developed a number of tools to run his production process in a
systematic formula. Hence, the Toyota Producing System (TPS) was preliminary formed.
Ohno’s introduction of the innovative system significantly enhanced Toyota and developed
the firm into a global and iconic automobile corporation. After two years when Taiichi Ohno
retired in 1978, Japanese vehicle exports had reached around six million annually. “Toyota
Producing System” was becoming globally well-known and applicable in any fields. TPS was also
simulated in many countries for the developments.
Ohno emphasized innovative adaptation should be required on a leader. A qualified leader
should obtain the skill to make transformation in order to adapt the rapid changing business
environment. Conservatism and ignorance will kill the potential of success.
 Taiichi Ohno’s decision to leave for US in order to find out the solution of the shortage of the
company resources and eventually come out with the idea of TPS is related to the theory of “win-
with-singularity” from Sun Zi Art of War. The birth of TPS can be considered as a singularity among
all the automotive industries at that moment. TPS had brought enormous profit to the Toyota
and made the company to dominate the market of automobile in past 50 years. In a nutshell,
above matter has clearly shown us that the involvement of a single and unique idea will always
help a party to win their fight in war either marketing.