Toyota Production System

The Toyota Production System is a production system developed by Toyota Motor Corporation to provide quality, low cost, and short lead time by eliminating waste. It has two pillars, just-in-time and jidoka, and is maintained through standardized work and kaizen following PDCA. Development is credited to Taiichi Ohno, with concepts rooted in earlier work by Sakichi Toyoda and Kiichiro Toyoda.

Source checked2/2 values · 2026-10-25Methodology

Specification

2 sources

Kind	methodology
Origin	Toyota Motor Corporation

Study notes

TPS comprises two pillars: just-in-time and jidoka.
TPS is maintained and improved through iterations of standardized work and kaizen following PDCA, or the scientific method.
Development of TPS is credited to Taiichi Ohno, Toyota's chief of production in the post-WW II period.
Ohno led development at Toyota throughout the 1950s and 1960s, beginning in machining operations.
Dissemination to the supply base occurred through the 1960s and 1970s; outside Japan it began with the Toyota-General Motors joint venture NUMMI in California in 1984.
Jidoka originated with Sakichi Toyoda's automatic looms, which stopped operating whenever a thread broke.
Kiichiro Toyoda developed just-in-time in the 1930s, decreeing no excess inventory and supplier partnerships to level production.
Under Ohno's leadership, just-in-time developed into material and information flows to control overproduction.
MIT research published in 1990 as The Machine That Changed the World coined the term lean production to describe the TPS paradigm.
TPS is also referred to by the synonym TPS.