Working Toward the Mobility Society of the Future
Message from
the President
The Source of Our
Value Creation:
What Makes Us Toyota
Value Creation Story:
Working toward the Mobility
Society of the Future
Business Foundations
for Value Creation
Corporate Data
> Our Founding Spirit >The Toyoda Principles and Toyota Philosophy > Toyota Production System (TPS) > Toyota and Sports
Our Founding Spirit: For the Sake of Others
Sakichi Toyoda Sought to Ease His
Mother's Burden
Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of the Toyota Group,
was born the son of a carpenter in the village of
Yamaguchi, now part of Kosai City, Shizuoka
Prefecture, in 1867. Full of curiosity, Sakichi is said to
have spent his early years reading a wide range of
books, thinking about how he might make a contri-
bution to society. One day, Sakichi was thinking
about his mother, and how every evening she toiled
at her loom, weaving fabric late into the night. He
wondered if there might be a way to make her work
easier. At the time, weaving was a laborious process,
requiring the use of both hands and legs to control
the threads of warp and weft in sequence. At the
age of 23, Sakichi invented his first loom, the Toyoda
Wooden Hand Loom, which could be operated with
only one hand and greatly increased efficiency. He
patented the loom in May 1891.
Seeking to more dramatically increase capacity,
Sakichi turned his attention to developing
a powered loom and invented Japan's first, the
Toyoda Power Loom, for which he received
a patent in August 1898.
Sakichi continued to invent and improve looms
for more than two decades. This work came to
head with the Non-Stop Shuttle Change Toyoda
Automatic Loom, Type G, invented in 1924 in
collaboration with his son, Kiichiro.
At the time, automatic looms had to be con-
stantly watched over by human operators so that
they could intervene when unpredictable anoma-
lies, such as threads breaking, occurred. The Type
G automatic loom used a mechanism to detect
anomalies like running out of or breaks in the
thread, stopping automatically in response.
Sakichi's first invention:
The Toyoda wooden
hand loom
(photo provided by the
Toyota Commemorative
Museum of Industry
and Technology)
Type G
Furthermore, the Type G automatically changed
the loom's shuttle when the thread was close to
running out. When changing the shuttles holding
the weft thread, operators previously had to use
their mouths to suck the end of the thread through
the
eye of the shuttle, inhaling cotton dust, which
caused problems in the lungs of many workers.
Sakichi, Kiichiro, and the colleagues invented a way
to pull the thread through using a simple manual
action that took advantage of the thread's tension.
The drive to serve others and make their work
easier-like Sakichi's desire to ease the burden of his
mother and employees-was carried on by his son
Kiichiro and remains a core value of Toyota today.
The Type G automatic loom was said to boast
the best performance of any loom in the world,
improving productivity more than twentyfold and
dramatically increasing textile quality. The success
of the Type G empowered Kiichiro Toyoda to take
on the challenge of establishing a Japanese
automotive industry, which many at the time,
more than 80 years ago, considered beyond the
capabilities of Japanese industry. This was the
work to which he would dedicate the rest of his life.
Making Domestic Cars and
Establishing a Japanese Auto Industry
Kiichiro Toyoda, the son of Sakichi, was born in
1894. After graduating from college in 1921, he went
to work at Toyoda Boshoku, his father's company,
and traveled to Europe and the United States for the
first time. In the 1920s, the streets of the United
States were teeming with Ford Model Ts. The
automotive era was dawning. In Japan, the number
of imported automobiles was gradually rising, but
their use was confined to the very wealthy.
automatic loom
Model A1 passenger car proto-
type completion ceremony
Kiichiro was already determined to produce
domestic cars and establish a Japanese auto
industry. In 1926, Kiichiro was named managing
director of the newly established Toyoda
Automatic Loom Works, Ltd. and began studying
automobiles in earnest. The company established
an automotive department in September 1933
and in 1934 officially entered the automotive
business, completing its first engine prototype.
In 1935, the first Toyoda Model A1 prototype
passenger car was completed, and the Toyoda
Model G1 Truck was announced. The very next
year, in 1936, mass production of Model AA
passenger cars commenced. Toyota Motor Co.,
Ltd. was established in 1937, with Kiichiro be-
coming its president in 1941.
Management Crisis, Labor Disputes,
and Commitment to Providing Employment
In post-war 1949 Japan, measures to curb
inflation rapidly stabilized prices, but the resulting
reduction in the money supply plunged industry
into serious funding shortages, triggering the
so-called "Dodge Line Recession." The prices of
iron, steel, and other materials rose, but the
officially fixed price of automobiles stood
unchanged, causing the profitability of the
automotive industry to decline significantly.
In December of that year, Toyota Motor Co.,
Ltd. and its labor union signed a memorandum
aimed at cooperating to overcome the crisis,
stating that the Company was at all costs to avoid
job cuts as a means of overcoming the crisis.
Kiichiro had faced employment issues at Toyoda
Automatic Loom Works during the Showa
Depression in 1930 and was determined to never
again allow such a situation to arise. His entry into
the automotive industry had been in part a strate-
gy to diversify and thereby avoid the recurrence of
employment problems, so he was, of course,
resolved to avoid job cuts at all costs in the face
of the 1949 business crisis.
In January 1950, negotiations with the Bank of
Japan began on the Toyota Motor Co., Ltd.
reconstruction plan. In April of that year, Toyota
Motor Sales Co., Ltd. was established to resolve
the problem of delays in payments for vehicles,
a major cause of the Company's financial troubles.
Far from improving, however, the situation
worsened further. As the Company's business
results showed no sign of improvement,
labor-management negotiations with the Toyota
Motor Co., Ltd. labor union deteriorated into a
protracted dispute. During collective bargaining
that April, the Company made reconstruction
proposals centered on job cuts that the labor
union could not accept, and the dispute
continued for another month and a half until
a memorandum was finally signed in June.
Accepting responsibility for the labor disputes,
Kiichiro Toyoda resigned as president of the
Company in May 1950. In March 1952, he agreed
to make his much-awaited return to the position,
but, before he could do so, he passed away at
the age of 57. Nevertheless, his aspirations were
kept alive by his colleagues, who persevered with
purely home-grown technologies as other
Japanese automakers were forming technology
alliances with U.S. and European manufacturers.
These efforts led to the 1955 launch of the
Toyopet Crown, the first passenger car to be
developed and built entirely in Japan, a long-held
dream of Kiichiro Toyoda.
The Spirit of Sakichi and Kiichiro Toyoda
Born into a poor family, Sakichi Toyoda was
driven to make others' work easier, teaching
himself in order to invent automatic looms and
going on to build Toyota's foundations. Not
content to simply follow the easy path set by his
father, Kiicihro Toyoda took on the challenge of
domestic car-making, which many at the time
said was impossible, navigating tremendous
social changes as he built the Company and the
foundations of Japan's automotive industry. The
spirit they embodied-of striving to stay ahead of
the times and endeavoring to be studious and
creative for the betterment of lives and society-
lives on in Toyota today. It is the core of what
makes us Toyota.
TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION
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