Management Lessons from Taiichi Ohno: What Every Leader Can Learn from the Man who Invented the Toyota Production System

CHAPTER 1

LEARNING FROM MR. TAIICHI OHNO

Lesson 1: No One Really Understood What I Was Saying, So I Had to Go to the Gemba and Give Detailed Instructions

This is an excerpt taken from Taiichi Ohno’s writings at the time of the commemoration of Toyota’s first automotive plant (the Honsha plant) in 1988:

In 1963, we deployed kanbans throughout the factory. There was no grand design for this, so even we didn’t know what would happen. The impact of the words “increase productivity,” “limit overproduction,” and “use fewer people” could not really be calculated. No one really understood what I was saying, so I had no choice but to go to the gemba and ...