Lean

Taiichi Ohno Interview Video Footage

Avatar photo By Jon Miller Updated on May 2nd, 2023

This week I found a five-minute YouTube video excerpt featuring Taiichi Ohno. It is a television program about the revolutionary productivity Ohno achieved at Toyota. It is from the late 1980s. Taiichi Ohno is interviewed in what looks like his living room, interspersed with black-and-white footage from Toyota in the 1950s.

 

Discovering Revolutionary Productivity Techniques: Insights from Taiichi Ohno at Toyota

Here are a few of the things you can learn from the video:

  • Waste can occur when people mistakenly think they are being productive
  • Setting aggressive targets for those who can identify waste is helpful
  • After a target is hit, setting a new one can continue driving improvement
  • We’ve always done things this way” or “But he’s a hard worker” can indicate a lack of awareness of waste
  • Meeting people where they are is important to effect change
  • To make work flow, a foreman’s job changes to running the line smoothly and not doing the work itself
  • Ohno revolutionized part feeding to the assembly line, optimizing human labor in machining departments through the just-in-time method
  • Lack of cash was the constraint that forced the conception of minimum-stock production (a.k.a. TPS, Lean)
  • Kanban was a card that acted as currency and communicated what was consumed
  • Changeover time reduction allowed for a greater variety of low-volume items to be delivered by Toyota.

Experience Taiichi Ohno’s voice and see him smile in this valuable video.

 


  1. Geno Johnston

    April 4, 2017 - 9:36 pm
    Reply

    Great video clip of the true Master. Nothing that he described is difficult actually much eiaser then many think. It’s all about “Mindset” and changing the way others think. Thanks for sharing Jon, there are so many little “golden nuggets” if you listen closely to his words.

Have something to say?

Leave your comment and let's talk!

Start your Lean & Six Sigma training today.