Foreword
In the middle of the last century, Toyota developed management principles that were instrumental in helping the Japanese car industry to catch up with Western car manufacturers, and in many cases to outperform them.
Western car manufacturers had relied for too long on their supposed economies of scale and a supposedly secure market situation with stable demand. Processes and planning were unable to respond to short-term fluctuations. Long-term detailed plans that left little room for change and were often unrealistic led to management methods and products that lagged behind customer requirements, resulting in high costs, errors and waste.
At the end of the 1980s, the opportunities offered by the so-called "Toyota Production System" ...
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