Visiting the US, Ohno saw how Piggly Wiggly supermarkets worked: customers took what they needed, and the shelf was replenished only when a certain quantity was taken. He flipped this for manufacturing. Instead of pushing parts from the previous process, the subsequent process would pull what it needed.
Here is the pdf version:
Takahiro Fujimoto's The Evolution of a Manufacturing System at Toyota provides a detailed analysis of how the Toyota Production System (TPS) developed through decades of necessity, focusing on waste elimination, continuous improvement, and evolutionary learning capabilities. The work highlights foundational concepts like Jidoka (automation with a human touch) and Just-in-Time (JIT) manufacturing, which evolved from post-war constraints into a global standard for lean production. A digital scan of the book is available for borrowing at Internet Archive . The Evolution of a Manufacturing System at Toyota the evolution of a manufacturing system at toyota pdf
Because Toyota’s greatest evolution is not in any PDF—it’s on every factory floor where a worker stops the line to solve a problem before it becomes a defect. Visiting the US, Ohno saw how Piggly Wiggly