Chapter 3The Heart of the Toyota Production System: Eliminating Waste

Many good American companies have respect for individuals, and practice kaizen and other TPS tools. But what is important is having all the elements together as a system. It must be practiced every day in a very consistent manner—not in spurts—in a concrete way on the shop floor.

—Fujio Cho, President, Toyota Motor Corporation

 

We touched on the philosophy of eliminating waste, or muda, as they say in Japan, in Chapter 2, with Ohno's journey through the shop floor. He spent a great deal of time there, learning to map the activities that added value to the product and getting rid of non-value-adding activity. It's important to take a closer look at this, because many of the ...

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