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)
• 
  

Toyota Production System (TPS)

Toyota

- Faster designs

- More reliable

- Competitive cost

The secret of Toyota's success is Operational Excellence...

TPS is set of lean tools and techniques and the Toyota Way provides governing principles for TPS. 

The TPS House

Taiichi Ohno is the creator of TPS. 

Developed by Fujio Cho, president of Toyota Motor Corp. 

> Structural system

> Is strong when the pillars and roof are strong

• JIT - Pull parts through production based on customer demand instead of pushing parts through production based on projected demand. Relies on many lean tools, such as Continuous Flow, Heijunka, Kanban, Standardized Work and Takt Time.
• Kaizen (Continuous Improvement) - A strategy where employees work together proactively to achieve regular, incremental improvements in the manufacturing process.
• Muda (Waste) Reduction - Muda is anything in the manufacturing process that does not add value from the customer’s perspective.
• Jidoka - Design equipment to partially automate the manufacturing process (partial automation is typically much less expensive than full automation) and to automatically stop when defects are detected.
• Heijunka - A form of production scheduling that purposely manufactures in much smaller batches by sequencing (mixing) product variants within the same process.
• Poka Yoke - Error proofing. Design error detection and prevention into production processes with the goal of achieving zero defects. An example is different types of nozzles (that don't fit into the non-compatible vehicle) for diesel and petrol at gas stations. 
• Visual management - Visual indicators, displays and controls used throughout manufacturing plants to improve communication of information.