Taiichi Ohno

Books

• Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production
  "Here's the first information ever published in Japan on the Toyota production system (known as Just-In-Time manufacturing). Here Ohno, who created JIT for Toyota, reveals the origins, daring innovations, and ceaseless evolution of the Toyota system

• Workplace Management: Taiichi Ohno
  "If you insist on blindly calculating individual costs and waste time insisting that this is profitable of that is not profitable, you will just increase the cost of your low volume products. For this reason there are many cases in this world where companies will discontinue car models that are actually profitable, but are money losers according to their calculations. Likewise, there are cases where companies sell a lot of model that they think is profitable but in fact are only increasing their loses." page 32

• Just-In-Time for Today and Tomorrow: Japanese Management Series
  

• The Birth of Lean:
  by Koichi Shimokawa and Takahiro Fujimoto (Editors). There are a lot of books that describe the Toyota Production System, but most do so in a way that implies that there was a master plan to create a company-wide improvement system. But as the pioneers in The Birth of Lean explain, there was no master plan—TPS came about through experimentation, trial and error, and an evolution of ideas that shaped Toyota’s structure and management system. This is an honest look at the origins of Lean, written in the words of the people who created the system. Through interviews and annotated talks, you will hear first-person accounts of what these innovators and problem-solvers did and why they did it. You’ll read rare, personal commentaries that explain the interplay of (sometimes opposing) ideas that created a revolution in thinking. In The Birth of Lean, you’ll get a glimpse inside the minds and thought processes of the system’s creators and innovators: Taiichi Ohno ”the man who envisioned a way of working that would evolve into the Toyota Production System Eiji Toyoda ”the former Toyota President and Chairman who oversaw the development of TPS and the inclusion of TQC at Toyota Kikuo Suzumura ”the Toyota manager recognized as the most influential in translating Ohno’s ideas into actionable items Michikazu Tanaka ”the manager and executive at Toyota affiliate Daihatsu who adapted TPS to his organization Kaneyoshi Kusunoki ”the former head of Toyota's production engineering organization who refined the buffering system in use in Toyota’s operations Masao Nemoto ”the Toyota executive central to the deployment of TQC at Toyota

Articles

• Interview with Masaaki Imai on Taiichi Ohno   view details
  "What was he like to converse with? He didn't say much. Actually, he much preferred to listen... When you introduce Kaizen, the workers are the most grateful recipients of this improvement. They find that because of the various standardized work introduced - because things become much more regimented and well managed - they can carry on with their work without any surprises. And the result is a much more satisfying job. Workers are the greatest recipients of Kaizen work."

• Toyota's Top Engineer on How to Develop Thinking People   view details
  "Mr. Ohno often said to us, 'Don't look with your eyes, look with your feet. Don't think with you head, think with your hands.' He also taught us, 'People who can't understand numbers are useless. The gemba where numbers are not visible is also bad. However, people who only look at the numbers are the worst of all.'"

• Ohno’s Problem-Solving Methods   view details
  "leaders have to respect people and make it safe for people to understand problems and correct them by both trial and error and experiments."

Author Quotes

• Having no problems is the biggest problem of all.

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• Standards should not be forced down from above but rather set by the production workers themselves.

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• Costs do not exist to be calculated. Costs exist to be reduced.

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• The key to the Toyota Way and what makes Toyota stand out is not any of the individual elements - but what is important is having all the elements together as a system. It must be practiced every day in a very consistent manner, not in spurts.

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• All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing the time line by reducing the non-value adding wastes.

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• My first move as the manager of the machine shop was to introduce standardized work.

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• Don't look with your eyes, look with your feet. Don't think with you head, think with your hands.

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  Toyota's Top Engineer on How to Develop Thinking People

• The name “kanban” came after we had been using the concept for a while. We came up with the name when we were preparing to undergo the audit for the Deming Prize in 1964.

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  The Birth of Lean

• When you go out into the workplace, you should be looking for things that you can do for your people there. You’ve got no business in the workplace if you’re just there to be there. You’ve got to be looking for changes you can make for the benefit of the people who are working there.

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  The Birth of Lean

• Why not make the work easier and more interesting so that people do not have to sweat?
  The Toyota style is not to create results by working hard. It is a system that says there is no limit to people's creativity. People don't go to Toyota to 'work' they go there to 'think'

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All quotes by Taiichi Ohno