Topic > Influences on the Toyota Production System - 1213

“Do not assume that the original problem statement is necessarily the best, or even the right one.”[1]The Toyota production system has been influenced by the United States manufacturing primarily the Ford manufacturing system. Ford's manufacturing system was highly profitable as it implemented mass production which reduced production costs. The same system would not have worked for Toyota which is a Japanese company as the customers' needs are different and the availability of resources is also limited. Therefore it was necessary for the architects of the Toyota Production System to design their model with the interests of Japanese culture in mind. This led to the design of a system in which mass production of different types of vehicles was achieved at low cost and with minimal waste, in contrast to the Ford system in which large production of a few models helped reduce costs. failures, it is important that all participants know not only what happened and how it happened, but also why.”[1]A production system is a combination of many processes and steps, it is important that all workstation operators have an idea of ​​what work needs to be done, how many products to launch, etc. In the Toyota Production System this is controlled by a system known as Kanban. Kanban is a reporting system for implementing just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing[3]. Kanban is like a piece of paper that contains information to individual operators on what needs to be done, the quantity, duration etc. So by using this system all workstations are well informed about what needs to be done. This reduces failures (deviations) and above all there will be no overproduction, which is very important in production....... middle of the paper ...... When there is high growth, production efficiency it does not have to be very high as seen in the Ford production system where profits were made by mass producing large numbers of fewer types of cars. They were able to sell these cars because economic growth was good and everyone wanted to buy a car. During the development stages of the Toyota production system there was slow growth in the Japanese economy, this influenced the architects to develop the system in such a way that it would be profitable in both slow growth and high growth. They have introduced concepts like production leveling, just-in-time, Kanban system and many more to have a competitive edge over competitors for any future situation. 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]