Vision:

Delight our customers through innovative products, by utilising advanced technologies and services.

Mission: Practise ethics and transparency in all our business operations. Touch the hearts of our customers by providing products and services of superior quality at a competitive price. Cultivate a lean and flexible business model throughout the value chain by continuous improvement.

Facts: Toyota

Toyota has annual sales of $120 Billion Produces ~5.5 million vehicles per year From 56 manufacturing plants across 6 continents Employs ~200,000 people 3rd largest automotive manufacturer

Company History

Established in 1937 out of Sakichi Toyodas weaving machine company Launched first car in 1947 Toyota Production System formed in 1950 based on Just-In-Time principle First global expansion in 1959 at Brazil

The Toyota Way

TOYOTA SUMMARIZES ITS VALUES AND CONDUCT GUIDELINES WITH THE FOLLOWING FIVE KEY PRINCIPLES: Challenge Kaizen (improvement) Genchi Genbutsu (go and see) Respect Teamwork

What is Toyota lean?

End result of applying the TPS to all areas of business. A fivestep process: Defining customer value Defining value stream Making it flow Pulling from the customer and back Striving for excellence. Taiichi Ohno (founder of TPS) 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 that time line by removing the non-value-added waste.

Because of demand uncertainty and lead-times, in many cases inventory is necessary to allow for smooth production. Hence TPS follows the supermarket model or keeping a small amount in stock. As soon as customers take products away, they are replenished. Each demand instance triggers a part being pulled from upstream. The triggering mechanism is called Kanban.

We need a method to detect defects when they occur and automatically stop production so an employee can fix the problem before the defect continues downstream. Jidoka is also referred to as autonomation equipment endowed with human intelligence to stop itself when it has a problem. Lean manufacturing dramatically increases the importance of building things right the first time.

Andon system

Conclusion
Incredible consistency comes from operational excellence. The operational excellence is based on the quality improvement tools and methods developed by Toyota (under the TPS): such as JIT, kaizen, one-piece-flow, jidoka. These technique triggered a lean revolution in the manufacturing sector.