ABSTRACT
The future of the Toyota production system involves thoroughly eliminating waste in the pursuit of maximum cost reductions. The Toyota production system repeatedly emphasizes the need to eliminate overproduction waste. The use of production equalization, synchronization, and one- piece flows to do away with interprocess delays represent a tremendous advance of the Toyota production system over the Ford system. The Toyota production system stresses small lot production. Mixed production of this type will find increasingly more application in the Toyota production system, not just to assembly lines but to upstream processes, such as machine processes, presswork, welding, forging, and casting. The Toyota production system takes it as axiomatic that demand fluctuations should be handled without increasing personnel if at all possible. Efforts will be made to spread the Toyota production system to the entire Toyota group of enterprises so that the parent company and its suppliers can develop as an integrated whole.
