Toyota

Paper Summary:

This paper relates that "The Toyota Production System" by Taiichi Ohno is a description of how a single company, Toyota took what it had learned about industrialization and tweaked it to build an empire of growth. On the other hand it is a description of the way in which Toyota and other Japanese companies stepped away from mass production systems to a system that created quality rather than quantity production of small numbers of many models of car. The paper further relates that Ohno's work is the story of how Toyota endured difficult economic times and excelled during good economics by creating a new system of manufacture that is now copied worldwide. In addition, the work is an autobiography of the mind of the man who created this system and applied its principles for success. The paper summarizes and discusses Chapters 1-4 in the book.

From the Paper:

"Chapter five is a comparison of the TPS to the mass production (Ford) model of production. The chapter discusses the fact that quantity should not be the goal of production, but quality and this should be the focus at every stage of production and development. The Ford model gave the idea that problems could be repaired later, while TPS stresses that prevention of problems is much less costly than repairing them later. The chapter then briefly discusses the restructuring of Ford to this changing model of production. The final chapter closes with a lengthy discussion of the ability of TPS and the company to endure and continue to grow even in slow growth periods. The chapter closes with the idea of flexibility as the greatest strength of an individual and an organization."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Dosi, G., Nelson, R. R., & Winter, S. (Eds.). (2001). The Nature and Dynamics of Organizational Capabilities. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
• Ohno, T. (1988). Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale ProductionNew York, NY: Productivity Press.

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