ABSTRACT
The words “just-intime” pronounced by Toyoda Kiichiro were a revelation to some Toyota management people, one of whom became quite attached to the idea. “Just-in-time” was new to us then and we found the concept stimulating. The idea of needed parts arriving at each process on the production line when and in the quantity needed was wonderful. Although it seemed to contain an element of fantasy, something made us think it would be difficult but not impossible to accomplish. Autonomation was taken from the ideas and practice of Toyoda Sakichi. The Toyota-type auto-activated loom, which he invented, was fast as well as equipped with a device to automatically stop the machine should any one of the many warp threads break or the weft thread run out. A major condition for production under the Toyota production system is the total elimination of waste, inconsistency, and excess.
