TPS - Ohno's Journey

• 1930's Toyota struggled. Japanese market too small, and demand too fragmented. 
• 1950s Eiji Toyoda goes on a 12-week study tour of US plants to study the Ford motor system. 
• After return Toyoda assigns Ohno the task of focus on improving Toyota's production. 
• Realized they need to adopt mass producing mechanism. 
• Ohno
• Benchmarked the competition
• Further tours to US
• Studied Ford's book (Today & Tomorrow) - Ford's Moving Assembly Line.
• Pull System - 
• In any well-run supermarket, individual items are replenished as each item begins to run low on the shelf. Material replenishment is initiated by consumption. 
• Implemented Kanban to signal to the prev step when its parts needed to be replenished (with the help of visual cards). Thus the concept of JIT was evolved. 
• Implemented Jidoka
• Implemented Kaizen (based on Deming's PDCA cycle)
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