And while it’s possible to build a building, and a profitable business, using factory methods, it hasn’t resulted in a quantum leap in construction efficiency - it often yields no cost improvement at all. Typically this means producing buildings in factories, instead of on-site by hand. Toyota production system: beyond large-scale production.Folks have tried over and over again to make construction more efficient by applying lessons from manufacturing. Womack et al (1990) The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production, Rawson Associates, New York.She knows nothing about the Toyota Production System, but she enjoys the effect of it everyday-just like the millions of other Toyota drivers out there. The price was right and the extras exceeded the expectations (and probably the needs). She never wanted the feeling of a Ferrari, she wanted a cost efficient and reliable car that would not turn into a French nightmare like the Renault Mégane she had before. It was the definitive best offer in the small car market. Toyota will for sure bounce back-because of, and not despite of, the Toyota Production System. The latter fact does, of course, not exempt Toyota from the responsibility-and that’s why there are recalls. There are two characteristics of the recalls: It is the same error on all models and its made by suppliers.
Many have concluded that this marks the end of Toyota as the world’s manufacturing champion. They’re wrong. In October 2012, for example, 7.5 cars were recalled due to a possible defect in the power window switch (including Yaris). And it did not end there Toyota has had several other recalls the last years. During the next months, close to 10 million cars were recalled all over the world (!). Then, in January 2010 another acceleration problem was identified. The first occurred in November 2009, when many new Toyota’s reported uncontrolled acceleration because of floor mats sliding under the gas pedal. However, never a success without a mob: Toyota skeptics has been fed by huge recalls from Toyota the latest years. TPS is the perfect production system, but only for Toyota… The recent fall and rise of Toyota Half a century after its development, the TPS has inspired thousands of such XPSs. Inspired by the TPS, they believe that developing a tailored system for their companies is much better than relying on consultants selling scattered lean projects (I explained why in an earlier post). Today, there is an on-going trend for companies to develop their own company-specific production systems (XPSs). Lean manufacturing has become the dominant manufacturing paradigm since its introduction and its dissemination continuous to grow also outside the manufacturing industry. What a success it has became! Today, few scholars will dispute the potential cost savings of successfully implementing a Lean in many type of industries. Lean is basically just a new name for TPS-better fitted for the American and European audiences. Then, in 1990, the famous book “The Machine that changed the World” by Womack, Jones and Roos, described the superiority of TPS over Western automobile production concepts, and introduced the world for the term “Lean production”.
The same importance is given to the principle of “Jidoka”, which explains how people should work together with technology to make the best of both. The TPS is a holistic system of production principles, often symbolised by the “TPS house” shown below. It all starts with robust processes (“Stability”), that are kept stable by leveling of production plans (“Heijunka”), kept constant by “Standardized work”, and continuously improved (“Kaizen”). The principle of “Just-In-Time” means that each process produces exactly what is needed, with the minimum amount of resources, just when the customer (the next process) needs it. It takes the ideas of mass production by Fredrick Taylor and Henry Ford a giant step forward, by adding an invariable customer perspective. TPS focuses on producing the highest quality, at the lowest cost, with the shortest lead times, through the elimination of waste in all operations. The TPS was developed incrementally over the years 1945-1975.
In his book “Toyota Production System” published the first time in Japanese in 1978, Taiici Ohno (1988) described the step-by-step development of Toyota’s super efficient production concept.
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