Toyota Production system - Research Paper Example

TPS is an integrated socio-technical system developed by Taiichi Ohno, Shigeo Shingo, and Eiji Toyoda. This system includes its management philosophy and practices. It assists Toyota in organizing its manufacturing activities and logistics and in effective interaction with suppliers and customers. The major objectives of TPS include resolution on the overburden, inconsistency, and elimination of waste. As Basu points out, this system addresses seven kinds of waste such as waste of overproduction, waste of time on hand, waste in transportation, waste of processing itself, waste of stock on hand, waste of movement, and waste of making defective products (Basu 11).

Toyota believes that quality management is the key to global competitiveness and hence the company deploys the TPS as a tool for meeting customer tastes and preferences. The most fascinating feature of the TPS is that it can accurately identify wastes in production and effectively optimize various scheduling processes. In the view of some experts, the greatest strength of TPS is the way it develops people. Unlike a push system where employees just work according to the instructions they are given, the TPS greatly fosters employee creativity and this situation benefits the company to improve its productivity.

In TPS, T stands for ‘Thinking’ as well as ‘Toyota’. The TPS encourages Toyota workers to come up with revolutionary production techniques and unique ideas that would contribute to the firm’s market competitiveness. It is noted that this system is highly potential to develop efficient leaders who can thoroughly understand various processes and hence train others. In addition, TPS is a better tool to develop exceptional teams of employees that can properly follow the company’s philosophy.

Similarly, this system greatly aids the organization to cut lead-time by eliminating all the bits