Toyota production system

Ops

a manufacturing system, developed by Toyota in Japan after World War II, which aims to increase production efficiency by the elimination of waste in all its forms. The Toyota production system was invented, and made to work, by Taiichi Ohno. Japan’s fledgling car-making industry was suffering from poor productivity, and Ohno was brought into Toyota with an initial assignment of catching up with the productivity levels of Ford’s car plants. In analyzing the problem, he decided that although Japanese workers must be working at the same rate as their American counterparts, waste and inefficiency were the main causes of their different productivity levels. Ohno identified waste in a number of forms, including overproduction, waiting time, transportation problems, inefficient processing, inventory, and defective products. The philosophy of TPS is to remove or minimize the influence of all these elements. In order to achieve this, TPS evolved to operate under lean production conditions. It is made up of soft, or cultural aspects, such as automation with the human touch—autonomation—and hard, or technical, aspects, which include just-in-time, kanban, and production smoothing. Each aspect is equally important and complementary. TPS has proven itself to be one of the most efficient manufacturing systems in the world but although leading companies have adopted it in one form or another, few have been able to replicate the success of Toyota.

Abbr. TPS