It is a
manufacturing system developed by Toyota in Japan after World War II, which
aims to increase production efficiency by the elimination of waste. The Toyota
production system was invented and made to work, by Taiichi Ohno. While
analyzing the problems inside the manufacturing environment; Ohno came to
conclude that different kinds of wastes (non value added works) are the main
cause of inefficiency and low productivity. Ohno identified waste in a number
of forms, including overproduction, waiting time, transportation problems,
inefficient processing, inventory, and defective products.
Figure shows the Toyota Production System in detail. From this figure it can be seen
that TPS is not only a set of different tools but it is the philosophy and
integration of different tools and systems to achieve a common goal of waste
reduction and efficiency improvement. Each element of this house is critical,
but more important is the way the elements reinforce each other. Just In Time
(JIT) means removing the inventory used to buffer operations against problems
that may arise in production. The ideal of one-piece flow is to make one unit
at a time at the rate of customer demand or Takt time. Using smaller buffers
(removing the “safety net”) means t hat problems like quality defects become
immediately visible. This reinforces Jidoka, which halts the production
process. This means workers must resolve the problems immediately and urgently
to resume production.
Stability
is at the foundation of the house. While working with little inventory and
stopping production when there is a problem causes instability and a sense of
urgency among workers. In mass production, when a machine goes down, there is
no sense of urgency because the maintenance department is scheduled to fix it
while the inventory keeps the operations running. By contrast, in lean
production, when an operator shuts down equipment to fix a problem, other
operations will also stop immediately due to no inventory creating a crisis. So
there is always a sense of urgency for everyone in production to fix problems together
to get the machine in working condition and to run the production as soon as
possible.
If the
same problem occurs repeatedly, management will quickly conclude that this is a
critical situation and it should be cracked without any delay. People are at
the center of the house, because it is only through continuous improvement that
the operation can ever attain this needed stability. People must be trained to
see waste and solve problems at the root cause by repeatedly asking why the
problem really occurs. Problem solving should be on the actual site of the
problem where everything is visible and practical also; this technique of
problem solving is called Genchi Genbutsu.
In
general TPS is not a toolkit. It is not just a set of lean tools like
just-in-time, cells, 5S (sort, stabilize, shine, standardize, sustain), Kanban,
etc. It is a sophisticated system of production in which all parts contribute
to a whole. On the whole, its focus is on supporting and encouraging people to
continually improve the processes they work on.
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