Toyota Production System

The Toyota Production System (TPS) is an integrated socio-technical system, developed by Toyota, that comprises its management philosophy and practices. The TPS is a management system that organizes manufacturing and logistics for the automobile manufacturer, including interaction with suppliers and customers. The system is a major precursor of the more generic "lean manufacturing". Taiichi Ohno and Eiji Toyoda, Japanese industrial engineers, developed the system between 1948 and 1975. 


Principles
The underlying principles, called the Toyota Way, have been outlined by Toyota as follows: 
Continuous improvement
•Challenge (We form a long-term vision, meeting challenges with courage and creativity to realize our dreams.)
•Kaizen (We improve our business operations continuously, always driving for innovation and evolution.)
•Genchi Genbutsu (Go to the source to find the facts to make correct decisions.)

Respect for people
•Respect (We respect others, make every effort to understand each other, take responsibility and do our best to build mutual trust.)
•Teamwork (We stimulate personal and professional growth, share the opportunities of development and maximize individual and team performance.)
External observers have summarized the principles of the Toyota Way as: 
The right process will produce the right results
1.Create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface.
2.Use the "pull" system to avoid overproduction.
3.Level out the workload (heijunka). (Work like the tortoise, not the hare.)
4.Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right from the start. (Jidoka)
5.Standardized tasks are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment.
6.Use visual control so no problems are hidden.
7.Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and processes.


Add value to the organization by developing your people and partners
1.Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others.
2.Develop exceptional people and teams who follow your company's philosophy.
3.Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them improve.


Continuously solving root problems drives organizational learning
1.Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options; implement decisions rapidly;
2.Become a learning organization through relentless reflection and continuous improvement and never stop.
What this means is that it is a system for thorough waste elimination. Here, waste refers to anything which does not advance the process, everything that does not increase added value. Many people settle for eliminating the waste that everyone recognizes as waste. But much remains that simply has not yet been recognized as waste or that people are willing to tolerate.
People had resigned themselves to certain problems, had become hostage to routine and abandoned the practice of problem-solving. This going back to basics, exposing the real significance of problems and then making fundamental improvements, can be witnessed throughout the Toyota Production System.
The principles of the Toyota Production System have been compared to production methods in the industrialization of construction.