[rschmitty]

Man TPS... been a while. While studying mechanical engineering in college we learned about TPS in an industrial system's engineering class.

The professor, I think a little bitter that it became known as Toyota's always like to say it was an American idea. At the time American auto was fat happy and lazy, not seeing the need to eliminate "muda". William Edwards Deming was trying to get his "lean" ideas across to American auto mfg, but they weren't interested.

He went to Japan/Toyota and and that team is where the Toyota Production System came to be. This is also a major factor in how Japanese autos really kicked the crap out of American for so long. Only once American autos realized how bad they were getting beat up did they finally put an effort into getting lean and started to study the TPS. You can see how long its taken them to (arguably) catch up.

Japan honored his teachings with the naming of their highest manufacturing award: The Deming Prize. A former Deming Prize winner, Yoji Akao taught similar ideas and now that is a high award for American quality, the Akao Prize

Anywho, just thought it was a cool story

Now you know why we like to say kanban and kaizen so much!