Influences to the Toyota Production System

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“Don’t assume that the original statement of the Problem is necessarily the best, or even the right one.”[1]

The Toyota Production system was influenced by the production systems of the United States mainly the Ford production system. The Ford production system was highly profitable has it implemented mass production which reduced the cost of manufacturing. The same system would not have worked for Toyota which is a Japanese company has the customer needs are different and also the availability of resources limited. Therefore it was necessary for the architects of Toyota Production System to design their model on the interests of the Japanese culture. This led to the design of a system in which mass production of different types of vehicles was achieved at a low cost and minimum wastage contrary to the Ford system in which large production of few model helped in reducing the cost.

“In correcting system deviations and failures, it is important that all the participants know not only what happened and how it happened, but why as well.”[1]

A production system is a combination of many processes and steps, it is important for all the workstations operators to have an idea of what work is to be done, how many products to roll out etc. In the Toyota Production System this is controlled by a system known as Kanban. Kanban is a signaling system for implementing just-in-time (JIT) production[3].Kanban is a like a piece of paper which contains information to the particular operators on what is to be done, the quantity, duration etc. Thus by using this system all the workstations are well informed on what is to be done. This reduces failure (deviations) and mainly there will be no overproduction which is very important in manufacturing....

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...When there is high growth manufacturing efficiency need not be very high as seen in the Ford production system where profits were made by mass producing large number of fewer types of cars. They were able to sell these cars has the economic growth was good and everyone wanted to buy an automobile. During the developing stages of the Toyota Production system there was slow growth in the Japanese economy, this influenced the architects to develop the system such that it would be profitable even in slow growth as well as high growth. They introduced concepts like production leveling, just-in-time, Kanban system and many more to have a competitive edge over there competitors for any given situation in the future. The Toyota production system has the ability to learn and adapt to future concerns, it uses information from the external environment to optimize and grow. [6]

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