Toyota was a company that checked for the necessary parts at the beginning of the month and then finally started making cars.
At that time, inventory, the price to buy parts at the beginning of the month, was a considerable amount of money considering the company's size.
Therefore, JIT (just-in-time) results from squeezing out wisdom to reduce the number of funds collected due to the need.
It may be a little hard to imagine if you only imagine the inventory of finished cars.
Let's take a car seat as an example.
After painting, cars go through an assembly line of the finished car, on the sheet metal and assembling sheets at the beginning of the assembly process.
The door goes through the painting process separately from the main body, so there is no door.
The wide opening makes it an excellent time to bring the seat into the body.
The sheets are arranged in the same order as the bodies. (The seat maker can also make it in that order in advance.)
When the body reaches a particular place, the seat approaches the opening of the body. It works as programmed in advance.
The operator confirms the position, lowers the seat to the body, tightens the bolts, and completes the seat assembly work.
The seat assembly was not synchronized from the beginning to this point.
Since it is heavy-duty work, it was a target of autonomation from a very early stage, so now the only work left for the worker is to position and fix it with bolts.
Even by automating this work, we have analyzed every detailed work and eliminated the work without added value.
It is Kaizen.
JIT (just-in-time) is a mechanism to supply seats so that the timing of this seat assembly process is the same.
Imagine everyone.
The sheet is not like coming from the tree that is the sheet. It's natural.
There are many parts in the sheet.
There is a mechanism that combines a spring, surrounds the seat cushion, and makes the sitting movement of a person comfortable.
One-box seats, etc., have a mechanism that makes you wonder how to operate them.
For a seat manufacturer to supply seats to the assembly line of a finished vehicle, it is necessary to collect and assemble many parts.
Imagine the seat as a finished car, and it wouldn't be possible without the procedure of timely integration and assembly of various parts in the same way.
Car parts are said to be 50,000 points when screws and bolts are counted as 1.
Even if you look at the units supplied to the assembly line of the finished car, 20,000 points will not fall.
Each of them is supplied to the assembly line at a fixed time and assembled in a fixed order.
It is easy to recognise it as a single line if you imagine only the line of the finished car. Still, if you imagine the production lines of various synchronised parts, you can see a tremendous expansion.
I hope you can imagine the connection between Kaizen and Kaizen that led to the realisation of JIT for the finished vehicle line.
One of the Toyota ways is the word "continuous kaizen".
I have just explained above is a "continuous kaizen" filled with the thoughts of who has inherited it.
It is said that the Toyota Production System has been researched at LEAN. And it is now being used at manufacturing sites, as a matter of course, overseas. However, the people at Toyota's manufacturing sites are still there now.
The word "continuous kaizen" is the keyword of Toyota Way, which was compiled in 2000.
Their wisdom does not know to stop.
When I think this is the case, I am constantly working to find and eliminate new waste every day, with the spirit of "getting it done".
The power of continuation cannot be ridiculous.
I continue to support Japanese companies to restore their ability to improve.
In some companies, "continuous kaizen" has taken root.
I have seen many cases where only has achieved beautiful results once, but what is essential for gates and the like is the ability to continue "continuous kaizen".
Recently, I received a report on "Continuous Kaizen" from a leader who truly understood Kaizen.
I want other organisations to follow suit.