Learn from the Sensei

It is seldom that we have the opportunity to learn from the masters, the Sensei. Here’s a good post for those of us that are interested in TPS (Toyota Production System). I especially like this part:

In 1943 Taiichi Ohno was transferred to the automotive side of Toyota from the Loom Works. The architect of the Toyota Production System was not an automotive engineer. He had no prior background in automobile manufacture. This allowed him to look at the automotive manufacturing process with fresh eyes and also apply a perspective from an entirely different industry: spinning thread. When people say “we’re not automotive, TPS doesn’t work for us” they should remember that what we call lean manufacturing today owes more to thread spinning (jidoka), the Piggly Wiggly supermarket (kanban) and the efforts of Dr. Deming to teach PDCA and the scientific method than anything. These were the seeds, the automobile industry was merely the soil.

Which part did you like the most?