Packaging Process Improvement Lean History

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The History of Lean Manufacturing

Packaging Process Improvement Sakichi Toyoda

Toyoda was the inventor of automated power looms used in textile factories. His original contributions to lean manufacturing were autonomation and jidoka. Autonomation is a quality control process. When a defect is produced, the process is stopped, the condition is corrected and permanent solution is sought by identifying the root cause.

His son Kiichiro Toyoda founded an automotive manufacturing company with eventually became Toyota. The vice president of Toyota Taiichi Ohno is said to be the person who eventually added most of the main concepts used in the current Toyota Production System. Two of these concepts are Kaizen (Process Improvement) and Standardized Work.

Later about Process Improvement Taiichi Ohno said"Without Standards, There Can Be No Kaizen”, attributed to Taiichi Ohno, former Executive Vice President of Toyota.

During the late 1970's and early 1980's the "Big Three" auto makers were rapidly loosing market share to the Japanese auto makers. In an effort to stem their losses, they looked to Toyota to see how they were producing their cars. TPS was brought to the United States and adopted by the "Big Three Auto Makers" in the 1980's. This concept for producing cars "TPS" eventually became known as Lean Manufacturing.