TPS - Toyota Production System or Thinking People System

The TPS House was developed by Taiichi Ohno and Eiji Toyoda to make it possible to explain Toyota's evolving system to employees and suppliers.  The aim of TPS is to eliminate all muri, mura, muda (overburden, unevenness, waste) from the operations.  It is a system that uses the PDCA approach to involve everyone in solving problems and improving quality, cost, delivery, safety, and morale.

What is TPS? The Toyota Production System 'house' structure was named because with a roof, pillars and foundation it represented a familiar shape that also represented stability.


TPS continues to evolve today.  Toyota people are beginning to call TPS the "Thinking People System" instead of the Toyota Production System.  TPS is always improving.


TPS is the Operational Blueprint for a Lean Enterprise

The organizations that have implemented Lean most successfully have adopted TPS as their operational blueprint.  They have studied and understood the system, renamed it to take ownership of it as their own system, and adopted as pure a form of TPS as possible

  • Make what the customer needs, when it is needed, and in the right amount
  • Minimize inventories
  • Separate machine work from human work and fully utilize both
  • Build quality into the process and prevent errors from happening
  • Reduce lead-times to allow for rapid, flexible scheduling
  • Produce a high mix of low volume products efficiently

The GRPS house shows how to build a world class production system that continuously improves by eliminating waste.

 

Left Pillar
Just-in-Time (Takt-Flow-Pull)
Eliminate the 7 Wastes of Production
Create a smooth flow of product and information, minimize inventory and space.

Right Pillar
Jidoka (Autonomation)
Build quality into the process, separate man & machine  using intelligent automation.
Implement low-cost automation, error-proofing, equipment upgrades and reliability improvement.

Foundation
Heijunka (Leveling)
Stabilize production schedule variability
Reduce total Lead-time, coordinate sales, scheduling, and customer needs


Learn more about TPS at the Toyota website.