Operation Management - II

Group Assignment Book Review

Toyota Production System: Beyond LargeScale Production
- Taiichi Ohno
- Published in 1992 by Productivity Press Private Limited.

Submitted by:-

Group No.:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Gaurav Tyagi (141421)

Palash Agarwal (141436)
Priyank Sharma (141443)
Shruti Mittal (141453)
Zeel Maheta (141460)

Section: D
Batch: MBA-FT (2014-2016)

Institute of Management, Nirma University

Date of Submission: 14th, March 2015

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This book talks about Lean principles which can improve any production system. The book
includes both historical and philosophical description of just-in-time and Lean
manufacturing. Apart from this book provide inspiration and instruction for management who
seeks to improve efficiency through the elimination of waste.
This book tells that Toyota family ask Ohno to catch up USA manufacturing process whose
productivity was 9 time higher than Japan during post war period. Ohno used experimental
and thoughtful approach to achieve the goal in a slow manner. It required abandoning what
had been conventional in automobile manufacturing as well as bookkeeping and considerable
faith. The supermarket and automated looms produced by Toyota family was the inspiration
for Ohno. This two business provided the money to start the automobile manufacturing
process.
The Kanban system was the solution developed by Ohno to reach his goal which is visual
order system i.e. production of sufficient defect free parts. This system is opposite to
traditional method of manufacturing parts i.e. maximum machine can produce. The book also
talks about the asking for five times about the causes of a problem to reach the root of it and
also talks about the Just in time manufacturing method. He talks about the removing the
waste i.e. any activity or process which is redundant means does not add any value. To
identify the defective work and finding the cause of this book suggest about the reduction in
lot size and stock inventory.
Some of the key highlights of the book are as follows:

Capacity = useful work + waste, therefore reducing waste means greater profits.
Autonomisation of employees, intelligent use of automation and just in time

minimises waste.
Achieving this requires time, deliberate learning and close coordination with partners

and employees, plus clear drive from organisational leadership.

Deliberate attention to mistakes and their correction using "5 Why's" along with
deliberate attention to workflow and standardisation are also key in comparison, while
mass production is superficially more efficient it often sacrifices efficiency for
volume and speed.

This book is worth reading to understand the historical ideas about lean manufacturing. The
book gives the understanding and reason behind the Toyota Production system in a short but
quality insight provider which is a good thing. I think this work is seminal in the field, and

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should be considered compulsory reading and understanding TPS, and the subsequent
evolution into lean manufacturing, is critical to any business leader. The great part to me is
the context and impact of the core pillars of the Toyota Production System. The author made
those clear and conveyed well how much they helped. From my point of view though this is
the Toyota production system, the applicability of the concept for any type of business is
emphasized throughout the book.
The criticism for this book from my point of view is that it doesn't provide a lot of depth, nor
much in the way of practical advice, on lean manufacturing which stops me to give 5 stars.

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