Photo: Toyota Industries Corporation

The Beginning

This is the Type-G Toyoda Automatic Loom with Non-stop Shuttle Change Motion which was developed by Sakichi Toyoda. This loom was considered revolutionary for its speed and efficiency and was sold to a British textile company for the equivalent of 1 million yen in 1929. Great-grandfather Toyoda provided the seed money from his sale of the Type-G Automatic Loom to start, with his son Kiichiro, the Toyota Motor Company and hence, the Type-G loom gave life to the Type A engine and Toyota Motor Corporation.

• - Note #1: The Toyoda family business of making looms was known as Toyota Industries because the word “toyoda” means “fertile rice paddies” and associating with a farming background just wasn’t considered progressive. It is also said that the family considered 8 brush strokes in Toyota more fortuitous than the 10 brush strokes in Toyoda.   Lesson #1: The Toyoda family was firmly on its way to understanding how to sculpt public perception and convince itself of prosperity by self-design.
• - Note #2: Sakichi Toyoda’s loom was a technological achievement in implementing the principle of Jidoka , a system in which the machine stops itself when a problem occurs. This became an integral part of the Toyota manufacturing process, allowing for a more lean operating staff. Lesson #2: Toyota was built on the principal that good engineering was at the core of allowing a manufacturing based business to grow with maximum labor and minimal technological distractions.
• - Note #3: Kiichiro Toyoda took his father, Sakichi’s, ideas to a new level by introducing the method of The 5 Whys, a problem-solving technique designed to learn the root of a problem and more quickly develop a solution. Together with his father’s ideas, this became a way of improving quality, reducing cost and increasing efficiencies. Lesson #3: The Toyodas were giving life to a new way of thinking through a problem: asking why, why and why would eventually lead to a solution.

The Celica

The Bit in the Middle

The Toyoda family continued building Toyota Motor Corporation and finally, due to the oil crisis in the early-1970’s, began to get a foothold in the North American market by introducing small cars with better fuel economy than it’s US produced competitors. They were successful in the level of quality they had because smaller economical cars manufactured and sold in the US were considered entry level and therefore, sub-par and were with lower quality standards. In the 1980’s, due to tariff imposed on imported vehicles, Toyota began manufacturing in the United States. Let’s just jump to the notes and lessons here because that is where the real story continues.

• - Note #4: The Toyodas’ commitment to Jidoka and the 5 Whys gave way to an entirely new way of manufacturing cars, specifically the Just In Time (JIT) principal and the Toyota Production System (TPS). JIT is an inventory driven process that determines the best return on investment by assuring that parts and product are not manufactured before they are needed, thereby increasing the capital and labor and increasing the return on investment. JIT and TPS were both inspired by a visit by the Toyota engineers in the US to a Piggly Wiggly.  Lesson #4: JIT meant that Toyota was producing like clockwork. Once the product was designed it meant that, like Santa’s toy factory, product just popped out of a system that ticked along.
• - Note #5: Toyota began manufacturing in Fremont, CA (as part of the philosophy of creating and manufacturing for the local sales market) with GM at a plant that became known as NUMMI. This joint venture with GM gave Toyota a supplier and employee base that was multi-generational because of the base of previous automotive plants in the area and gave GM the ability to adapt the lean methods of JIT, TPS and Jidoka to their own assembly techniques. Lesson #5: The opportunities at NUMMI were supposed to be mutually beneficial while the 2 companies learned from one another. Toyota got American corporate design tastes and unionized employees and GM got more lean production techniques.
• - Note #6: Toyota began making larger than entry level cars and introduced its luxury brand, Lexus, in response to market demand. Lesson #6: We all know where this lesson is heading now, don’t we?

Part 2 is here.