Every story about manufacture is hyping (if the word ‘hype’ exists back then) about just-in-time, kandan, automation. In more hardcore stories, you likely to hear toyota production system, pull system, tack, etc. I never had official training about Toyota principles but anytime I hear the new words I looked them, up online. Since all concepts are very simple to explain, I thought I understood them from reading one paragraph definition on wiki.
… No not at all …
After I quitted the job, I wanted to learn more about the company I worked for. TPS (Toyota Production System) is one of the topic that came across me so many time - on one occasion the customer paid several millions of euros to get TPS consultancy from my company. So, I looked online for TPS books that was written by Japanese, not the western interpretation of how Toyota does it.
This book is written by the guy to invented it, Taichi Ono (written in a Japanese way). It is full of Toyota stories - How Toyota came about building cars? Relationship of Toyota Weaving Machine and Toyota Car? What problems TPS is trying to solve? - The book explains the stories first then slowly TPS words got introduce and they became alive which I think make it easier for learners to apply to different problems by knowing the context how the tools was invented.
In one chapter, the book compared TPS to ford mass production which I find it genuinely interesting since I’ve never heard about the comparison. Many of TPS principle is counterintuitive, for example, instead of batch productions of Product type A, then B, then C, TPS suggested to interleave production of A, B, and C. Which doesn’t make any senses without reading the whole book.
After I completed the book, the essential takeaways from TPS isn’t the tools (manufacturing buzz words) but the thought process and principle of TPS which I don’t think can be conclude into few phrases.