Taiichi OHNO and Toyota Production System

Toyota's rivals themselves acknowledged the superiority of the Toyota Production System (TPS), which was put in place in the 1950s-1960s under the direction of the company's production chief Taiichi Ohno (Ohno). Officials from GM went on record to say that Toyota was the benchmark in manufacturing and product development in the automobile industry. Ford and BMW also openly acknowledged Toyota's manufacturing superiority and often borrowed ideas from the TPS. On its part, Toyota encouraged other companies to study its manufacturing processes and did not deny access to its plants, even to representatives of rival companies. Toyota was growing rapidly and had overtaken Ford (the second largest company in the industry) in global market share in 2003.

Ohno was born in 1912 in Manchuria, China. After graduating from the Nagoya Technical High School, he joined Toyoda Automatic Loom Works (TALW) in 1932 and later moved on to the automotive business in 1943 as an assembly manager. In the late 1940s, when he was in charge of a machining shop at the Toyoda Group Automotive Operations, Ohno experimented with various ways of setting up the equipment to produce items that were needed in a timely manner. There was a severe shortage of material in Japan at that time as a result of the Second World War and the company did not have enough capital to carry huge inventories.