PRODUCTION

SYSTEM
ANN MARY 08PG0035
GYANESH 08PG0057
 Taiichi Ohno(founder of TPS) said

“All we are doing is looking at the time line from

the moment the customer gives us an order to
the point when we collect the cash. And we are
reducing that time line by removing the non-
value-added waste.”
 Toyota Production System (TPS)
• Definition: The production system developed by Toyota Motor
Corporation to provide best quality, lowest cost, and shortest
lead time through the elimination of waste.

• TPS is comprised of two pillars

Just-in-Time
Jidoka (autonomation)

• TPS is maintained and improved through iterations of

standardized work and kaizen (continuous improvement),
following Plan–Do-Check-Act (PDCA Cycle from Dr. Deming), or
the scientific method.
 History
1940s production system - Moving assembly line
Started lean manufacturing on the shop floor, after World War
II
After World War II Toyota Automatic Loom company decided
to start an automotive company.
They had some cash but did not have the infrastructure
Under these conditions, Taiichi Ohno was given the assignment
of catching up with American companies in productivity at a time
when they were behind
The supermarket simple idea of an automatic drink re supplier
lead to the development of tps
Taiichi Ohno, Shigeo Shingo and Eiji Toyoda developed the
 Fundamentals of TPS
The basics of TPS refers to elimination of 3 M
Muda , Muri & Mura
• Muda-Non-value-added. The most familiar
M includes the eight wastes. These are
wasteful activitiesthat lengthen lead times,
cause extra movement to get parts or tools,
create excess inventory, or result in any type
of waiting.
 Fundamentals of TPS….
Mura-Unevenness.
Unevenness results from an irregular
production scheduleor fluctuating production
volumes due to internal problems, like
downtime or missing parts or defects.
Muri-Overburdening people or equipment. This
is in some respect on the opposite end of the
spectrum from muda. Muri if pushing a
machine or person beyond natural limits.
Overburdening people results in safety and
quality problems. Overburdening equipment
Waste
 Goals
• To elimination of 3 M’s
• To make the process of production is as
flexible as possible
• Follow 5 s approach
• Participation of all employees in the work
process
• Elimination of imperfection or problem so
as to reduce inventory
• Systems thinking- tools & techniques are
highly interdependent
 7 Principles of TPS
Reduced set up times: organizing procedures, 
using carts, and training workers to do their
own setups, helped in slashing setup times
from months to hours and sometimes even
minutes
Small -lot production: economically produce
larger variety and smaller quantity
Employee involvement and empowerment:
formed teams and assigned responsibilities
 7 Principles
Quality at source: Since workers are at the
best position to find a defect and to
immediately fix it, they are assigned the
responsibility of eliminating defects as early
as possible.

Equipment maintenance: responsibility of

maintenance assigned to workers
Pull production: the quantity of work
performed at each stage of the process is
dictated solely by demand for materials
from the immediate next stage
Supplier involvement: Suppliers are
trained in ways to reduce setup times,
inventories, defects, machine breakdowns
etc., and take responsibility to deliver
their best possible parts
 14 Toyot a-Way Principles
Section I – Long-term philosophy
• Principle 1: Base your management decisions on a long-term
philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals.
Section II – The Right processes will produce the right results
• Principle 2: Create continuous process flow to bring problem to the
surface.
• Principle 3: Use “pull” system to avoid overproduction.
• Principle 4: Level out the workload (heijunka). (work like a tortoise
not the hare.)
• Principle 5: Build the culture of stopping to fix problems to get
quality right the first time.

12
 14 Toyot a-Way Principles
• Principle 6: Standardize tasks are the foundation for
continuous improvement and employee empowerment.

• Principle 7: Use visual control so no problems are hidden.

• Principle 8: Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology

that serves your people and processes.

13
 14 Toyot a-Way Principles

Section III – Add value to the organization by developing your

people and partners

• Principle 9: Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the

work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others.

• Principle 10: Develop exceptional people and teams who

follow your company’s philosophy.

• Principle 11: Respect your extended network of partners and

suppliers by challenging them and helping them improve.

14
 14 Toyot a-Way Principles
Section IV – Continuously solving root problem drives organizational
learning

• Principle 12: Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the

situation (genchi genbutsu).

• Principle 13: Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly

considering all options, implement decisions rapidly.

• Principle 14: Become a learning organization through relentless

reflection (hensei) and continuous improvement (kaizen).

• So we see that the JIT, Lean, 5S etc. are just tools that enable quality
and productivity. TPS is much more than that!

15
HOUSE OF QUALITY
House of Toyota
• Quality must be built in during the
manufacturing process.
If a defective part or equipment
malfunction is discovered, the
machine concerned automatically
stops, and operators stop work and
correct the problem.
For the Just-in-Time system to
function, all of the parts that are
made and supplied must meet
predetermined quality standards.
• 1. Jidoka means that a machine safely stops
when the normal processing is completed. It
also means that, should a quality or equipment
problem arise, the machine detects the problem
on its own and stop, preventing defective
products from being produced. As a result, only
products satisfying the quality standards will be
passed on to the next processes on the
production line.
• 2. Since a machine automatically stops when
processing is completed or when a problem
arises and is communicated via the "andon
(problem display board)," operators can
confidently continue performing work at
another machine, as well as easily identify the
problem cause and prevent its recurrence. This
means that each operator can be in charge of
many machines, resulting in higher
productivity, while the continuous
• Making only "what is needed, when it
is needed, and in the amount
needed!"
Producing quality products efficiently
through the complete elimination of
waste, inconsistencies, and
unreasonable requirements on the
production line.
In order to deliver a vehicle ordered
by a customer as quickly as possible,
the vehicle is efficiently built within
• 1. When a vehicle order is received, a
production instruction must be issued
to the beginning of the vehicle
production line as soon as possible.

• 2. The assembly line must be stocked

with small numbers of all types of
parts so that any kind of vehicle
ordered can be assembled.
• 3. The assembly line must replace
the parts used by retrieving the
same number of parts from the
parts-producing process (the
preceding process).
• 4. The preceding process must be
stocked with small numbers of all
types of parts and produce only the
numbers of parts that were retrieved
by an operator from the next
process.
 The TPS house diagram
• Two main pillars:

JIT (the most visible and highly publicized characteristics of

TPS)

Jidoka (never letting a defect pass to the next station; and

freeing people from machines)

• Base: Heijunka – Leveling out production schedule for both

volume and variety. A leveled production is necessary to
keep the system stable and to allow for minimum inventory.
Big spikes in the production of certain variety while
excluding others will create part shortages unless huge
inventory is maintained.

24
 The TPS house diagram
• JIT means removing, as much as possible, the inventory used
to buffer operations against problem that may arise in
production.
• The ideal one-piece flow is to make one unit at the rate of
customer demand or takt (German for meter).
• Using smaller buffer means quality defects become
immediately visible.
• This will reinforce jidoka which can halt the production
(Andon).
• The production line restarts once workers resolve the problem.

25
 The TPS house diagram
• Less inventory and the Andon forces urgency among the
workers.
• If the same problem happens repeatedly the management
realizes the critical situation and invests in Total Productive
Maintenance, where everyone learns how to clean, inspect and
maintain equipment.
• In traditional system, if the machine is down, the urgency is
missing because the maintenance department is scheduled to
fix it while production continues through the depletion of
inventory.

26
 The TPS house diagram
• People are the center of the house because only through
continuous improvement can the operation ever attain the
system stability.
• People must be trained to see waste and solve problem at the
root cause by repeatedly asking why the problem really
occurs.

27
 Types of waste
• Overproduction: Producing items for which there are no
orders, which generates such wastes as overstaffing and
storage and transportation costs because of excess inventory.

• Waiting: Workers having to stand around waiting for the next

processing step, tool, part etc. Or no work because of stock-
outs, lot processing delays, equipment downtime, and capacity
bottlenecks.

• Unnecessary transport: Carrying WIP long distances, creating

inefficient transport, or moving parts in and out of storage
facility.

28
 Types of waste
• Defects: Production of defective parts or correction. Repair or
rework, scrap, replacement production, and inspection mean
wasteful handling, time and efforts.
• Unused employee creativity: Losing ideas, skills,
improvements, and learning opportunities by not engaging or
listening to your employees.

29
 Eliminating Waste
• First step in removing non-value added steps from a process is
to map the process. Map the value stream following the actual
path taken by the part in the plant.
• Walk the full path yourself (genchi genbutsu).
• One can draw the path on a layout and calculate the time and
distances traveled (spaghetti diagram).
• Traditional cost saving focuses on value-added items and try
to improve those.
• TPS focuses on the entire value stream to eliminate the non-
value adding items.

30
 Benefits of One-Piece Flow
• Builds in quality – Every operator is an inspector and works to
fix problems in station before passing them on. If defects do
get passed on, they are detected quickly and problem can be
immediately diagnosed and corrected.
• Creates flexibility – If shorter lead times, more flexibility to
respond and make what customer really wants. Pushes for set-
up time reduction.
• Creates higher productivity – Every easy to spot the busy or
idle station and easier to calculate the value-added work.
• Frees up floor space – Because of inventory storage reduction.

31
 Benefits of One-Piece Flow
• Improves safety – Smaller batches means simpler
transportation system and less accidents because of forklifts.

• Improves morale – People do high percentage value-added

work and can see the results of their work faster.

• Reduces cost of inventory .

32
 “Pull” system to avoid
overproduction
• Milk example – weekly batch or daily purchase?
• Next purchase triggered when you start using the only bottle
of milk you have.
• Not an example of zero-inventory, but still a pull system.
• Because of demand uncertainty and lead-times, in many cases
inventory is necessary to allow for smooth production.
• Hence TPS follows the supermarket model or keeping a small
amount in stock. As soon as customers take products away,
they are replenished.
• Each demand instance triggers a part being pulled from
upstream.
• The triggering mechanism is called “Kanban” which means
cards, signboard or a poster.

33
 Kanban system
• At Toyota, empty bin (a kanban) is send upstream after a
demand instance.
• It is a signal to refill it with a specific number of parts or send
back a card with detailed information about the part location.
• Even today, one can see Kanban cards and bins moving on the
shop-floor.
• Instead of using sophisticated computer scheduling techniques,
this is a simple, effective and visual system of managing and
ensuring the product flow and JIT production system.

34
 Kanban system
• Gas tank example.

• Toyota philosophy about kanban:

“Kanban is an organized system of inventory buffers and as per
TPS, inventory is waste, whether it is in pull system or push
system. So kanban is something you strive to get rid of.”

• Toyota uses kanban to force process improvements.

35
 Kanban system
• Suppose we have four kanban cards for a particular products.
One each for four bins of products. TPS will conduct studies in
which one of the kanban cards (along with the corresponding
bin) is thrown away.

• Now, if the machine breaks down, the downstream process

will run out of parts 25% faster.

• The stress in the system will cause production shutdowns, and

will force teams to come up with process improvements.

36
 Not just pull
• Purely from the production perspective, it should be noted that
Toyota also uses push system where pull simply cannot be
implemented.
• Examples?
• In such cases, the emphasis in on lead-time reduction.
• Nowadays, because of Toyota experimenting e-kanban cards,
combination of push and pull system is used whenever
necessary.

37
 Level out the workload (heijunka)
• Demand uncertainty may lead to bumpy production schedule
if one-piece-flow is followed literally.
• TPS realizes that strict build-to-order system will again
build-up inventory and increase waste (Muda).
• Hence TPS tries to even out the production by consolidating
orders. Three-pronged approach: Elimination of –
4. Muda (non-value-added)
5. Muri (overburdening people or equipment)
6. Mura (unevenness)
• Toyota achieves the combination of JIT and heijunka by
following the principle of change-to-order (not build-to-
order) by delayed customization.

38
 Culture of stopping production to fix
problems (jidoka)
• Traditional production view: “Do not shut down the assembly
line!” The managers are judged by their ability to deliver the
numbers.
• TPS view: “If you are not shutting down the assembly plant, it
means that you have no problems. All manufacturing plants
have problems. So you must be hiding problems. Please take
out inventory so that problems surface. Then you will have to
shut down the assembly line and fix the problems.”
• If we continually follow this view, we can make even better-
quality products more efficiently.

39
 Jidoka
• Hence we need a method to detect defects when they occur
and automatically stop production so an employee can fix the
problem before the defect continues downstream.
• Jidoka is also referred to as autonomation – equipment
endowed with human intelligence to stop itself when it has a
problem.
• In-station quality is much more effective and less costly than
inspecting and repairing quality problem after the fact.
• Lean manufacturing dramatically increases the importance of
building things right the first time.
• With very low levels of inventory, there is little buffer to fall
back on in case there is quality problem.

40
 Andon system
• When the equipment shuts down because of a quality problem,
flags or light, usually with accompanying music, signal that
help is needed to solve the problem.
• This signaling system is called the andon system.
• At Toyota, the andon is called a “fixed-position line stop
system.”
• When a workstation in the assembly line signals a problem,
the production line is not stopped immediately.
• The manufacturing team has until the product moves to the
next workstation to respond and address the problem, before
the andon turns red and stops the assembly line.

41
Andon system

42
 Andon system
• If the problem is small enough that can be solved in the lead-
time between two workstation, 100% quality is achieved
without stopping the line.
• If the problem is complex, the team leader can conclude that
the line should stop.
• In TPS, the workstation detects the defects by using
countermeasures and error-proofing (poka-yoke).
• Applications of andon system to service organizations like
call-center are obvious!

43
Production Instruction
Timely Production
Replacement of Parts Used
Production of Parts Retrieved
 What is “Toyota” lean?

End result of applying the TPS to all areas of business. A five-

step process:
• Defining customer value
• Defining value stream
• Making it “flow”
• “Pulling” from the customer and back
• Striving for excellence.

52
THANK YOU