{"id":6436,"date":"2018-03-15T08:37:07","date_gmt":"2018-03-15T15:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog-prod.qad.com\/blog\/?p=6436"},"modified":"2020-11-05T14:54:01","modified_gmt":"2020-11-05T22:54:01","slug":"taiichi-ohno-toyota-production-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qad.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/taiichi-ohno-toyota-production-system","title":{"rendered":"Taiichi Ohno: Hero of the Toyota Production System"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“Wisdom is given equally to everybody. The point is whether one can exercise it.” <\/span><\/i>-Taiichi Ohno<\/span><\/i><\/h4>\n

Very few people have been able to harness and use their wisdom as powerfully as Taiichi Ohno, a Japanese industrial engineer and businessman who invented the “Ten Precepts” of <\/span>lean manufacturing<\/a><\/span>, a cornerstone of the Toyota Production System.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Taiichi Ohno: The Early Years<\/span><\/h2>\n

Taiichi Ohno was born on February 12, 1912 in Dalian, China and later attended the Nagoya Technical School. After graduation, he began working at Toyoda Spinning and Automatic Loom Works, one of the first of the Toyoda family’s companies. The family held a contest to create a new logo for the company and the winning design used the word Toyota – no \u2018d’ – thus the Toyota Motor Company was born. By 1943, Ohno was a production engineer with the Toyota Motor Company.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ohno rose quickly through the ranks at Toyota. In 1949, he became the machine shop manager and progressed to serve as director in 1954, managing director in 1964, senior managing director in 1970 and vice president in 1975. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Beginning of the Toyota Production System (TPS) <\/span><\/h2>\n

When Taiichi Ohno joined the Toyota Motor Company, the entire Japanese automotive<\/a> industry was behind the powerhouse American auto manufacturers in sales, quality and production. Toyota was operating at a loss and couldn’t afford to hire new people or purchase machinery and equipment to compete, but nonetheless, Toyota’s CEO set strategic goals in order to catch up with the Americans within three years. It was a tall order.<\/span><\/p>\n

Toyota sent Ohno to the U.S. to learn about American manufacturing techniques. He toured the Ford Motor Company’s production facilities and learned from <\/span>Henry Ford <\/span><\/a>himself about assembly lines. Most people believe this experience gave rise to the Toyota Production System (TPS), which led to the development of <\/span>lean manufacturing<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Supermarket Theory<\/span><\/h2>\n

By Ohno’s own accounts, the American experience that most influenced his thinking was the supermarket. He was intrigued by the displays of inventory in every aisle, which allowed people to pull the items they required as they were needed. He took the idea of “pulling” inventory back to Japan, adding the <\/span>“Kanban”<\/span><\/a> replenishment card for restocking. <\/span><\/p>\n

Interestingly, the Kanban card owes a lot to the old “two-bin” system of inventory management, where inventory is stored in two bins or packets. When stockroom personnel pull the last item in the primary bin, they open and use inventory in the second bin. The second bin includes a reorder card that signals to Purchasing it is time to order a replenishment supply. Ohno’s genius was in combining the pull system with the automatic replenishment.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Seven Wastes<\/span><\/h2>\n

Taiichi Ohno also recognized the best way to manage cost was to eliminate waste in every form. In doing so, he identified the “Seven Wastes”, which he defined as:<\/span><\/p>\n