Toyota’s Kaizen Experience

HISTORY
•1897
•1926
•1933
•1935(first passenger car prototype developed)
•1937(Toyota Motor Corporation established)
•1947(launched its first small car)
•1950(Toyota motor sales company was formed)
•1952-1970
•1974-1990’S
 Hurdles Faced

• Acute Labor shortage.(reasons)

• Workers were overburdened.(reasons)
• Increased stress for the workers(reasons)
• Excessive capital spending
 Remedies

• Employed many temporary workers

• Changed production management(JIT)
• Changed human resource management
• Changed working condition
 Practices Adopted
• KANBAN
• JIDOKA
• JIT
• SHOJINKA
• KAIZEN
 Pre-requisites for Kaizen
• Discard conventional • Think of how to do it,not
fixed ideas why it cannot be done
• Don’t make excuses.Start • Don’t seek perfection.do
by questioning current it right away even if for
practices only 50%of target
• Correct it right away,if u • Don’t spend money for
make mistake Kaizen use your wisdom
• Wisdom is brought out • Ask ‘WHY’five times and
when faced with hardship seek root causes
• Seek the wisdom of ten • Kaizen ideas are infinite
people rather than the
knowledge of one
 Waste identified
• Overproduction ahead of demand
• Unnecessary movements of materials and
products
• Excessive inventories
• Production of defective products
• Idle time
• Over processing
• Unnecessary movement of people
 Implementation of Kaizen

• Implemented by the supervisory staff and

engineers
• Implemented by workers through quality
circles and a suggestion system
 Other activities
• Encouraging an active role in quality control
• Utilizing employee ideas and opinions in
production processes
• Encouraging the practice of Kaizen in every
work sphere
 THE MODIFICATION
• Allowed plants to set their own annual
production efficiency targets
• Method of determining production efficiency
was changed
• Best standard time
• Reduce of long annual working hours
• Method of calculating the production
allowance was altered for blue collor workers
and removed for white collor workers
 Reconstruction of the assembly line
• Construct an assembly line where workers
could work easily and execute their operations
• Organizing a ‘human-centered’TPS
• Form a Kaizen mind in everyone so that
he/she willingly does Kaizen
 TARGETS
• The absence of any operations difficult to
execute
• Quality and worker security assurance
• Efficiency in logistics
• Assembling a vehicle in the shortest time
possible with minimum cost
• High investment returns