Wikipatterns

Chapter 1. Grassroots is Best

Geek and Poke (http:/geekandpoke.typepad.com). Courtesy of Oliver Widder. Used with permission.

In 1950 Eiji Toyoda — cousin of Toyota Motor Corporation founder Kiichiro Toyoda — visited the Ford Rouge plant in Michigan. At the time Toyota had produced 2,685 cars in its entire 13-year history, while Ford produced 7,000 a day (Ensici, 2006). He came to see how Ford mass produced cars, in hopes of taking some new ideas back to apply to Toyota's operations.

In the Ford plant, Toyoda saw that the sheet metal parts needed for car assembly were produced using an expensive die stamping system that produced massive quantities of parts, which were stored in warehouses until needed on the assembly line. When the system produced parts with defects, they were set aside to be repaired later, adding more time and expense to the manufacturing process (Ensici, 2006). Toyota didn't have enough money to maintain a system this complex and Toyoda felt it could be made more efficient, so he enlisted the help of Taiichi Ohno, an engineer and machine shop supervisor whose work is now recognized as critical to developing the processes that anchor the famous Toyota Production System (Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky, 2006).

It was on this assignment that Ohno made some critically important discoveries about the role of community and collaboration in improving manufacturing. He ...