History of Justin time.
Toyota Motor Corp. struggle through the 1930s primarily making simple tracks in the early years.
The company produced poor quality vehicles with primitive technology example hammering body panels over
logs and had little success.
In the 1930s Toyota's leaders visited Ford and General Motors to study their assembly lines and carefully
read Henry Ford's book.
Today and tomorrow they tested the conveyor system position machine tools and the economics of scale
idea in their loom production.
Even before World War Two polar bear realized that the Japanese market was too small and demand too
fragmented to support the high production volumes in the US a US auto line might produce nine thousand
units per month while Italy or that would produce only about 900 units per month and Ford was about
10 times as productive Toyota managers knew that if they were to survive in the long run they would
have to adapt the mass production approach for the Japanese market.
But how now jump ahead to Toyota's situation after World War 2.
In 1950 it had a budding automotive business.
The country had been decimated by two atom bombs.
Most industries had been destroyed their supply base was nearly and customers had literally money.
Imagine being a plant manager Taichi Ono your boss e.g. Toyota just returned from another tour of US
plans including the Ford River Rouge complex and he calls you into his office.
He calmly hangs you.
A new assignment.
Don't all bosses come back from trips with assignments.
The assignment is to improve Toyota's manufacturing process so that it equals the productivity of Ford.
It makes you wonder what Toyota could have been thinking based on the mass production paradigm of the
day.
Economies of scale alone should have made this an impossible feat for a tiny Toyota.
This was David trying to take on Goliath Ford's mass production system was designated to make huge quantities
of limited number of martyrs.
This is why all moderate were originally black.
In contrast Toyota needed to churn out low volumes of differing models using the same assembly line
because consumer demand in their auto market was too low to support dedicated assembly lines for one
vehicle.
Ford had tons of cash and a large U.S. and international market.
Toyota had no cash and operated in a small country with few resources and capital.
Toyota needed to turn cash around quickly from receiving the order to getting paid.
Ford had a complete supply system Toyota did not tell your dad didn't have the luxury of taking cover
under high volume and economies of scale afforded by Ford's mass production system.
It needed to adapt Ford's manufacturing process to achieve simultaneously high quality low cost short
lead times and flexibility.
This situation gave birth to this just in time manufacturing system Taichi Ono did not implement just
in time.
Overnight it evolved as time progressed and worked well with other lean principles including judo aka
the pulse system gone Bonn among others judo CA and Justin Time are the two key pillars of the Toyota
Production System.