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
Toyota Production System (TPS)
> Our Founding Spirit >The Toyoda Principles and Toyota Philosophy > Toyota Production System (TPS) > Toyota and Sports
Toyota Times
Akio
da's View
What is the Toyota Production System?
Akio Toyoda's View
Toyota
Times
What is the
Toyota
Production
System?
Akio Toyoda's View
In May 2020, at Toyota's financial results briefing,
President Akio Toyoda reflected on the efforts the
Company had made over the previous few years, saying:
"Over the past few years, we came to feverishly engage
in both a fight to bring back what makes us Toyota
and the complete redesign of Toyota for the future."
Revisiting messages President Toyoda gave starting from
a few years ago, two of the things he repeatedly has said
that makes us Toyota are the Toyota Production System,
or TPS, and cost reduction.
In August 2020, at Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan,
a new training program was started to nurture a select
group of "TPS leaders" from various divisions across the
Company. To emphasize the importance of the program
and to share his own thoughts about TPS, President
Toyoda joined the kick-off session.
1. Sakichi Toyoda Sought to Ease His
Mother's Burdens
This training program was created for Toyota's manage-
ment leaders who don't work at manufacturing front
lines to gain a deeper understanding of TPS in order to
help the Company accelerate its efforts to bring back the
essence of what makes it Toyota as it looks to complete-
ly redesign Toyota for the future.
Toyoda
I was a little concerned to hear today's participants'
statement of determination to "change Toyota any way
possible by utilizing what's learned and obtained through
this program."
There are two key concepts deeply rooted in Toyota
since its foundation, or even before then. Does anyone
know what they are?
Participant A
I think they are "Just-in-Time" and "automation with a
human touch," or "Jidoka."
Toyoda
That's it! That's what I wanted to hear! (everyone laughs)
That's why I volunteered to be the lecturer today to
help kick off the TPS training program. Hopefully, I can
help narrow the gap between my understanding
of Jidoka and Just-in-Time and yours.
First of all, let's talk about Jidoka. It'll be easier to
explain the concept by first looking at the automatic
loom invented by Sakichi Toyoda. Thinking about his
mother, and how she toiled to weave fabrics every eve-
ning and late into the night, the young Sakichi wondered
if there might be a way to ease her burden.
When Sakichi developed his first automated loom, both
hands were used to control the threads of warp and weft.
His invention allowed his mother to operate a loom using
only one hand. It also helped improve quality, increasing
overall efficiency and dramatically improving productivity.
Often at Toyota, TPS is considered the process of making
things efficient, and people talk about it as if changing
work processes is TPS's purpose. But, I think the pur-
pose should always be to make someone's work easier.
2. Improving Productivity Was Not the
Main Purpose
The Type G automatic loom is the machine that helped
drive a redesign of Toyota's business. Automatic looms
back then were always monitored by one operator,
based on a mindset of "one person, one machine."
Each person was the "guard" of their machine. This was
because operators were unable to predict abnormalities.
With this automatic loom, Toyota was able to secure the
capital required to shift its business model from an automatic
loom manufacturer to a car manufacturer. This was because
a world-leading automatic loom company in the United
Kingdom asked Toyota to sell its automatic loom technology.
The most common abnormalities that occurred when
weaving fabric with automatic looms were when thread
ran out or broke. The Type G was able to detect such
abnormalities at a time when there were no sensors.
When the thread ran out, it automatically changed to
another wooden shuttle with a new thread.
The shuttle needs to have the thread end out on the
surface. Before this machine was invented, workers had
to suck it out themselves. The problem was that there
was a lot of cotton dust in the air in textile factories,
which could damage workers' lungs when they inhaled
deeply. Sakichi invented a new feature that automatically
brought out the thread end. This invention was the result
of Sakichi simply exploring a desire to do something for
his team members on the manufacturing front lines who
were suffering damage in their lungs.
Thus, Sakichi determined what the abnormalities were
and then came up with system to prevent or stop them.
As a result, productivity improved--not the other way
around. He did not do all this just to improve productivity.
3. How President Toyoda Sees Jidoka
(Automation with a Human Touch)
In my view, Jidoka is about being centered on people.
It's about putting yourself in the shoes of someone
working there. You can't just issue orders to improve
efficiency or reduce resources from the safety of your
position far from the front lines. Toyota also has this
idea about adjusting the work per person to match the
full output of one unit of manpower (pursuing ichi-nin-
ku in Japanese).
This concept of ichi-nin-ku means the amount of work
that one worker can or should accomplish in a day.
We all only have 24 hours in a day. This applies equally
to everyone. And employees spend a lot of that time
devoted to work for a company. Knowing this, supervi-
sors must make the work being done by team mem-
bers as meaningful as possible. That is what Toyota's
manufacturing front lines have been pursuing.
The focus is creating more free time for workers by elimi-
nating waste in work processes to reduce overtime.
Pursuing ichi-nin-ku means valuing each person's time.
4. How President Toyoda Sees Just-in-Time
A phrase that is commonly associated with the concept of
Just-in-Time is "provide what is needed, when needed, in
the amount needed." The key to understanding Just-in-
Time is the idea of "lead time," the amount of time
required for products or services to be delivered after they
are ordered.
Toyoda
What comes to mind when you think about Just-in-Time?
Taking a "what is needed when needed" approach,
to respond quickly to customer needs, there would
need to be a lot of inventory, right? One finished vehi-
cle consists of about 30,000 parts. So, it would follow
that for a production line to flexibly produce orders
quickly, a tremendous amount of inventory would need
to on hand, right?
Participant B
But if we know and can meet what customers want...
Toyoda
Who do you mean by "customers"?
Participant B
Each downstream process... or our final end users.
Toyoda
But we sell around 10 million new vehicles annually, and
that means we have the same number of customers.
How can we understand what is needed by each specif-
ic customer? We can't, so instead, we have to have a
lean operation in place to detect abnormalities right away
and halt the pipeline so that we can make improvements
quickly. And that's why we need Just-in-Time.
In this way, I think the key concept that makes Just-
in-Time easier to understand is "lead time."
At Toyota, a common term for the next process in a
workflow, whether it be in manufacturing or in an office,
is "downstream process." Those in the downstream are
considered a "customer." President Toyoda was trying to
convince the participants to think of "Just-in-Time" in the
context of the bigger picture, to consider not only the
immediate downstream, but how things relate to the
company as a whole to deliver Toyota's vehicles to the
end customers "just-in-time."
5. Achieving the Lead Time of a Sushi Restaurant?
Take, for example, sushi. When you go to an authentic
sushi restaurant, are the finished orders just waiting in
front of the chef? I don't think so. Each piece is made to
order. You can't prepare every specification in advance for
10 million customers. It's important to understand what
we can't do. The key, then, is trying to shorten lead time.
TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION
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