Toyota Production System

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The Toyota Production System (TPS) is an integrated socio-technical system, developed by Toyota, that comprises its management philosophy and practices. The TPS is a management system [1] that organizes manufacturing and logistics for the automobile manufacturer, including interaction with suppliers and customers. The system is a major precursor of the more generic "lean manufacturing". Taiichi Ohno and Eiji Toyoda, Japanese industrial engineers, developed the system between 1948 and 1975. [2]

Contents

Originally called "just-in-time production", it builds on the approach created by the founder of Toyota, Sakichi Toyoda, his son Kiichiro Toyoda, and the engineer Taiichi Ohno. The principles underlying the TPS are embodied in The Toyota Way. [3]

Goals

The main objectives of the TPS are to design out overburden (muri) and inconsistency (mura), and to eliminate waste (muda). The most significant effects on process value delivery are achieved by designing a process capable of delivering the required results smoothly; by designing out "mura" (inconsistency). It is also crucial to ensure that the process is as flexible as necessary without stress or "muri" (overburden) since this generates "muda" (waste). Finally the tactical improvements of waste reduction or the elimination of muda are very valuable. There are eight kinds of muda that are addressed in the TPS: [4]

  1. Waste of overproduction (largest waste)
  2. Waste of time on hand (waiting)
  3. Waste of transportation
  4. Waste of processing itself
  5. Waste of excess inventory
  6. Waste of movement
  7. Waste of making defective products
  8. Waste of underutilized workers

Concept

Toyota Motor Corporation published an official description of TPS for the first time in 1992; this booklet was revised in 1998. [5] In the foreword it was said: "The TPS is a framework for conserving resources by eliminating waste. People who participate in the system learn to identify expenditures of material, effort and time that do not generate value for customers and furthermore we have avoided a 'how-to' approach. The booklet is not a manual. Rather it is an overview of the concepts, that underlie our production system. It is a reminder that lasting gains in productivity and quality are possible whenever and wherever management and employees are united in a commitment to positive change". TPS is grounded on two main conceptual pillars:

  1. Just-in-time [6] – meaning "Making only what is needed, only when it is needed, and only in the amount that is needed"
  2. Jidoka [7] – (Autonomation) meaning "Automation with a human touch"

Toyota has developed various tools to transfer these concepts into practice and apply them to specific requirements and conditions in the company and business.

Origins

Toyota has long been recognized as a leader in the automotive manufacturing and production industry. [8]

Toyota received their inspiration for the system, not from the American automotive industry (at that time the world's largest by far), but from visiting a supermarket. The idea of just-in-time production was originated by Kiichiro Toyoda, founder of Toyota. [9] The question was how to implement the idea. In reading descriptions of American supermarkets, Ohno saw the supermarket as the model for what he was trying to accomplish in the factory. A customer in a supermarket takes the desired amount of goods off the shelf and purchases them. The store restocks the shelf with enough new product to fill up the shelf space. Similarly, a work-center that needed parts would go to a "store shelf" (the inventory storage point) for the particular part and "buy" (withdraw) the quantity it needed, and the "shelf" would be "restocked" by the work-center that produced the part, making only enough to replace the inventory that had been withdrawn. [4] [10]

While low inventory levels are a key outcome of the System, an important element of the philosophy behind its system is to work intelligently and eliminate waste so that only minimal inventory is needed. [9] Many Western businesses, having observed Toyota's factories, set out to attack high inventory levels directly without understanding what made these reductions possible. [11] The act of imitating without understanding the underlying concept or motivation may have led to the failure of those projects.[ citation needed ]

Principles

The underlying principles, called the Toyota Way, have been outlined by Toyota as follows: [12] [13]

Continuous improvement

Respect for people

External observers have summarized the principles of the Toyota Way as: [14]

The right process will produce the right results

  1. Create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface.
  2. Use the "pull" system to avoid overproduction.
  3. Level out the workload (heijunka). (Work like the tortoise, not the hare.)
  4. Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right from the start. (Jidoka)
  5. Standardized tasks are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment.
  6. Use visual control so no problems are hidden.
  7. Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and processes.

Add value to the organization by developing your people and partners

  1. Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others.
  2. Develop exceptional people and teams who follow your company's philosophy.
  3. Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them improve.

Continuously solving root problems drives organizational learning

  1. Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation (Genchi Genbutsu, 現地現物);
  2. Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options (Nemawashi, 根回し); implement decisions rapidly;
  3. Become a learning organization through relentless reflection (Hansei, 反省) and continuous improvement and never stop (Kaizen, 改善).

What this means is that it is a system for thorough waste elimination. Here, waste refers to anything which does not advance the process, everything that does not increase added value. Many people settle for eliminating the waste that everyone recognizes as waste. But much remains that simply has not yet been recognized as waste or that people are willing to tolerate.

People had resigned themselves to certain problems, had become hostage to routine and abandoned the practice of problem-solving. This going back to basics, exposing the real significance of problems and then making fundamental improvements, can be witnessed throughout the Toyota Production System. [15]

The principles of the Toyota Production System have been compared to production methods in the industrialization of construction. [16]

Sharing

Toyota originally began sharing TPS with its parts suppliers in the 1990s. Because of interest in the program from other organizations, Toyota began offering instruction in the methodology to others. Toyota has even "donated" its system to charities, providing its engineering staff and techniques to non-profits in an effort to increase their efficiency and thus ability to serve people. For example, Toyota assisted the Food Bank For New York City to significantly decrease waiting times at soup kitchens, packing times at a food distribution center, and waiting times in a food pantry. [17] Toyota announced on June 29, 2011 the launch of a national program to donate its Toyota Production System expertise towards nonprofit organizations with goal of improving their operations, extending their reach, and increasing their impact. [18] By September, less than three months later, SBP, a disaster relief organization based out of New Orleans, reported that their home rebuilds had been reduced from 12 to 18 weeks, to 6 weeks. [19] Additionally, employing Toyota methods (like kaizen [20] ) had reduced construction errors by 50 percent. [19] The company included SBP among its first 20 community organizations, along with AmeriCorps. [18]

Workplace Management

Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management (2007) outlines in 38 chapters how to implement the TPS. Some important concepts are:

Commonly used terminology

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lean manufacturing</span> Methodology used to improve production

Lean manufacturing is a production method aimed primarily at reducing times within the production system as well as response times from suppliers and to customers. It is closely related to another concept called just-in-time manufacturing. Just-in-time manufacturing tries to match production to demand by only supplying goods which have been ordered and focuses on efficiency, productivity, and reduction of "wastes" for the producer and supplier of goods. Lean manufacturing adopts the just-in-time approach and additionally focuses on reducing cycle, flow, and throughput times by further eliminating activities which do not add any value for the customer. Lean manufacturing also involves people who work outside of the manufacturing process, such as in marketing and customer service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kanban</span> Japanese business method

Kanban is a scheduling system for lean manufacturing. Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer at Toyota, developed kanban to improve manufacturing efficiency. The system takes its name from the cards that track production within a factory. Kanban is also known as the Toyota nameplate system in the automotive industry.

Kaizen is a concept referring to business activities that continuously improve all functions and involve all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. Kaizen also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross organizational boundaries into the supply chain. It has been applied in healthcare, psychotherapy, life coaching, government, manufacturing, and banking.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eiji Toyoda</span> Japanese industrialist (1913–2013)

Eiji Toyoda was a Japanese industrialist. He was largely responsible for bringing Toyota Motor Corporation to profitability and worldwide prominence during his tenure as president and later, as chairman. He was succeeded as the president of Toyota by Shoichiro Toyoda.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shigeo Shingo</span> Japanese engineer

Shigeo Shingo was a Japanese industrial engineer who was considered as the world’s leading expert on manufacturing practices and the Toyota Production System.

Muda is a Japanese word meaning "futility", "uselessness", or "wastefulness", and is a key concept in lean process thinking such as in the Toyota Production System (TPS), denoting one of three types of deviation from optimal allocation of resources. The other types are known by the Japanese terms mura ("unevenness") and muri ("overload"). Waste in this context refers to the wasting of time or resources rather than wasteful by-products and should not be confused with Waste reduction.

Single-minute digit exchange of die (SMED) is one of the many lean production methods for reducing inefficiencies in a manufacturing process. It provides a rapid and efficient way of converting a manufacturing process from running the current product to running the next product. This is key to reducing production lot sizes, and reducing uneven flow (Mura), production loss, and output variability.

Genba is a Japanese term meaning "the actual place". Japanese detectives call the crime scene genba, and Japanese TV reporters may refer to themselves as reporting from genba. In business, genba refers to the place where value is created; in manufacturing, the genba is the factory floor. It can be any "site" such as a construction site, sales floor or where the service provider interacts directly with the customer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taiichi Ohno</span> Japanese businessman and engineer (1912–1990)

Ohno Taiichi was a Japanese industrial engineer and businessman. He is considered to be the father of the Toyota Production System, which inspired Lean Manufacturing in the U.S. He devised the seven wastes as part of this system. He wrote several books about the system, including Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production.

Takt time, or simply takt, is a manufacturing term to describe the required product assembly duration that is needed to match the demand. Often confused with cycle time, takt time is a tool used to design work and it measures the average time interval between the start of production of one unit and the start of production of the next unit when items are produced sequentially. For calculations, it is the time to produce parts divided by the number of parts demanded in that time interval. The takt time is based on customer demand; if a process or a production line are unable to produce at takt time, either demand leveling, additional resources, or process re-engineering is needed to ensure on-time delivery.

Five whys is an iterative interrogative technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem. The primary goal of the technique is to determine the root cause of a defect or problem by repeating the question "Why?" five times. The answer to the fifth why should reveal the root cause of the problem.

Autonomation describes a feature of machine design to effect the principle of jidoka (自働化)（じどうか jidouka), used in the Toyota Production System (TPS) and lean manufacturing. It may be described as "intelligent automation" or "automation with a human touch". This type of automation implements some supervisory functions rather than production functions. At Toyota, this usually means that if an abnormal situation arises, the machine stops and the worker will stop the production line. It is a quality control process that applies the following four principles:

  1. Detect the abnormality.
  2. Stop.
  3. Fix or correct the immediate condition.
  4. Investigate the root cause and install a countermeasure.

Genchi genbutsu (現地現物) literally translates "real location, real thing” and it is a key principle of the Toyota Production System. The principle is sometimes referred to as "go and see." It suggests that in order to truly understand a situation one needs to observe what is happening at the site where work actually takes place: the gemba (現場). One definition is that it is "collecting facts and data at the actual site of the work or problem."

The Toyota Way is a set of principles defining the organizational culture of Toyota Motor Corporation. The company formalized the Toyota Way in 2001, after decades of academic research into the Toyota Production System and its implications for lean manufacturing as a methodology that could be adopted by other organizations. The two pillars of the Toyota Way are respect for people and continuous improvement. The philosophy was popularized by Jeffrey K. Liker in his 2004 book, The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer. Subsequent research has explored the extent to which the Toyota Way can be applied in other contexts.

Muri is a Japanese word meaning "unreasonableness; impossible; beyond one's power; too difficult; by force; perforce; forcibly; compulsorily; excessiveness; immoderation", and is a key concept in the Toyota Production System (TPS) as one of the three types of waste.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norman Bodek</span> American teacher and consultant

Norman Bodek was a teacher, consultant, author and publisher who published over 100 Japanese management books in English, including the works of Taiichi Ohno and Dr. Shigeo Shingo. He taught a course on "The Best of Japanese Management Practices" at Portland State University. Bodek created the Shingo Prize with Dr. Vern Beuhler at Utah State University. He was elected to Industry Week's Manufacturing Hall of Fame and founded Productivity Press. He was also the President of PCS Press. He died on December 9, 2020, at the age of 88.

Lean dynamics is a business management practice that emphasizes the same primary outcome as lean manufacturing or lean production of eliminating wasteful expenditure of resources. However, it is distinguished by its different focus of creating a structure for accommodating the dynamic business conditions that cause these wastes to accumulate in the first place.

Lean enterprise is a practice focused on value creation for the end customer with minimal waste and processes. The term has historically been associated with lean manufacturing and Six Sigma due to lean principles being popularized by Toyota in the automobile manufacturing industry and subsequently the electronics and internet software industries.

The P-Course is a practical training program about Industrial Engineering implemented to teach the main techniques for industrial work improvement. Although especially aimed at applications in manufacturing, it can be useful also to transfer the core concepts of systematic improvement approach to people involved in operational activities in non-manufacturing businesses.

The visual workplace is a continuous improvement paradigm that is closely related to lean manufacturing, the Toyota Production System (TPS), and operational excellence yet offers its own comprehensive methodology that aims for significant financial and cultural improvement gains. Introduced by Gwendolyn Galsworth in her 1997 book Visual Systems, this system integrates and codifies the many iterations of visuality in the world of continuous improvement.

References

  1. ↑ Ohno, Taiichi (1988). Toyota Production System. New York, NY: Productivity Press. pp. XV. ISBN   0-915299-14-3.
  2. ↑ Strategos-International. Toyota Production System and Lean Manufacturing.
  3. ↑ Marksberry, Phillip (2011-01-01). "The Toyota Way – a quantitative approach". International Journal of Lean Six Sigma. 2 (2): 132–150. doi:10.1108/20401461111135028. ISSN   2040-4166.
  4. 1 2 Ohno, Taiichi (March 1998). Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production. Productivity Press. ISBN   978-0-915299-14-0.
  5. ↑ Toyota Motor Corporation: The Toyota Production System – Leaner manufacturing for a greener planet; TMC, Public Affairs Division, Tokyo, 1998
  6. ↑ ibidem, p. 11 ff.
  7. ↑ ibidem, p. 25 ff.
  8. ↑ Brian Bremner, B. and C. Dawson (November 17, 2003). "Can Anything Stop Toyota?: An inside look at how it's reinventing the auto industry". Business Week.
  9. 1 2 Ohno, Taiichi (March 1988), Just-In-Time For Today and Tomorrow, Productivity Press, ISBN   978-0-915299-20-1
  10. ↑ Magee, David (November 2007), How Toyota Became #1 - Leadership Lessons from the World's Greatest Car Company, Portfolio Hardcover, ISBN   978-1-59184-179-1
  11. ↑ Goldratt, Eliyahu M. (1990). What is this thing called Theory of Constraints and how should it be implemented?. North River Press. pp. 31–32.
  12. ↑ Toyota internal document, "The Toyota Way 2001," April 2001
  13. ↑ Toyota Motor Corporation Sustainability Report, 2009, page 54
  14. ↑ Liker, J. 2004. The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer.
  15. ↑ A study of the Toyota Production System, Shigeo Shingo, Productivity Press, 1989, p236
  16. ↑ "Construction as a manufacturing process? Similarities and differences between industrialized housing and car production in Japan" (PDF). Construction Management and Economics. October 21, 2010.
  17. ↑ El-Naggar, Mona (26 July 2013). "In Lieu of Money, Toyota Donates Efficiency to New York Charity". The New York Times . Retrieved 1 September 2013.
  18. 1 2 "Toyota Launches National Program to Expand Efforts to Help Schools, Hospitals and Community Organizations Make the Most of Every Dollar" (Press release). Chicago, Illinois: PR Newswire. PR Newswire US. June 29, 2011. Retrieved November 1, 2017.
  19. 1 2 Toyota (September 21, 2011). "Toyota Helps to Speed Post-Katrina Homebuilding, Reports Major New Orleans Nonprofit". Business Wire (Press release).
  20. ↑ BOSS, SUZIE (Winter 2012). "Engineering Higher Efficiency". Stanford Social Innovation Review. 10 (1): 56–57. Retrieved November 3, 2017.
  21. 1 2 Ohno, Taiichi (2007), Workplace Management. Translated by Jon Miller, Gemba Press, ISBN   978-0-9786387-5-7, ISBN   0-9786387-5-1
  22. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Glossary of Lean Terms".

Bibliography

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