Global Diffusion, Societal Effects, Contradictory Implementation
from Part I - Theories of Lean Production
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 March 2021
In 1930 the founder of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, Toyoda Sakichi, instructed his eldest son, Toyoda Kiichirō, to research the auto industry with a view to entering it. In 1933, Kiichirō announced that the company would begin making cars, stating: “We shall learn production techniques from the American method of mass production. But we will not copy it as is. We shall use our own research and creativity to develop a production method based on our own country’s situation” (quoted in Ohno 1988: 91). That situation included a small market that could not justify huge volumes with dedicated machinery, coupled with severe resource constraints. Their goal was to develop a production system based on lower volumes with low inventories. Toyota didn’t implement its first compete just-in-time system until 1958 and was not able to fully debug its kanban (continuous flow) system until 1962, after which it was adopted companywide (Tolliday 1998).
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