Taiichi Ohno Archives | Page 7 of 9

Gemba Keiei Chapter 22: Shut the Machines Off!

By Jon Miller - May 23rd, 2006

Taiichi Ohno starts by explaining the difference between an automatic loom “working” and “moving” or “running”. Working implies that jidoka prevents it from making defects. A machine “running” and producing defects is n

Gemba Keiei Chapter 21: Rationalization is Doing What is Rational

By Jon Miller - May 15th, 2006

The title of this chapter is somewhat awkward. By another translation you could read it as “Improvement means doing what is rational” or “Kaizen means following reason”. But here Taiichi Ohno is engaging in a bi

Gemba Keiei Chapter 20: What I Learned About Forging Changeover from Toyota do Brasil

By Jon Miller - May 3rd, 2006

Taiichi Ohno begins the chapter by saying “In order to achieve Just in Time you need to solve your changeover problems and reduce lot sizes. Forging processes are the most difficult.” This chapter should really be titled “Toyota

Gemba Keiei Chapter 19: Toyota Made the Kanban System Possible

By Jon Miller - April 17th, 2006

In this chapter Taiichi Ohno explains the origin and the conditions that resulted in the development of the kanban system at Toyota. In the beginning the machining process upstream would replenish what the assembly process downstream u

Gemba Keiei Chapter 18: Supermarket System

By Jon Miller - April 7th, 2006

Taiichi Ohno starts out the chapter not quite having left the themes of his last two chapters behind. He describes how the jidoka idea that came from the Toyota textile business led to one operator running 20 or 30 machines. This think

Gemba Keiei Chapter 17: The Goal – Improve Productivity Ten-Fold

By Jon Miller - April 2nd, 2006

Taiichi Ohno recounts when he first learned in 1937 that the American worker was 9 times more productive than the Japanese worker. Taiichi Ohno heard this from a Mitsubishi Electric factory manager who had recently returned from a tour

Gemba Keiei Chapter 16: Grandpa Sakichi’s Jidoka Idea

By Jon Miller - March 23rd, 2006

I really enjoyed this chapter for a couple of reasons. First, Ohno uses the old-fashioned honorific for “grandpa” or “old man” when referring to Sakichi Toyoda in the title. There’s a certain warmth there and a reminder that

Gemba Keiei Chapter 15: Just In Time

By Jon Miller - March 16th, 2006

In this chapter, Taiichi Ohno talks about “just in time” but does not focus much on the material and information flow within TPS. Instead, he spends most of his time contemplating the English phrase’s origin. The Orig

Gemba Keiei Chapter 14: Do Kaizen When Times Are Good

By Jon Miller - March 8th, 2006

In this brief chapter Taiichi Ohno emphasizes the need to do kaizen in order to be ready to compete with lowest cost production. When production volumes decrease, one strategy is to produce products with higher value added and higher m

Gemba Keiei Chapter 13: Improve Productivity Even with Reduced Volumes

By Jon Miller - February 24th, 2006

Taiichi Ohno pulls a lesson for Lean manufacturing out of the rice farming situation in the early 1980s in Japan. The government of Japan paid farmers to decrease the area used to cultivate rice in order to limit overproduction of rice

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