Toyota - a Brief History
Toyota and Why It Is So Successful
The History of Toyota
For organizational convenience I will discuss Toyota history as follows:
• The start
• The 1940s
• The 1950s
• Etc.
The start. The Toyota Motor Corp. (TMC) had its beginning in 1933 when it was established as a division within the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, Ltd.
The founder of Toyota was Kiichiro Toyoda (1894–1952), the son of Sakichi Toyoda (1867–1930). The values that have underpinned Toyota success startedwith Sakichi who was the son of a carpenter. Sakichi went from carpentry, which he had learned from his father, to making looms for weaving. He then came up with many inventionsthat resulted in remarkable improvements in looms. For example, by 1924 he had developed the famous “Type G” automatic loom, but not without much of that “hard work and persistence.” One of the important features of Toyoda’s looms was a device that would automatically stop the loom should a thread break. This prevented any defective cloth from being produced. This concept of building into a machine features that prevent poor quality is know as jidoka and would become one of the TMC’s two “pillars” of the Toyota Production System (TPS)
According to Wikipedia (Sakichi Toyoda, 2006) Sakichi is often referred to as the “King of Japanese Inventors” and as the “father of the Japanese industrial revolution.”
Toyota Motor Corporation the name was changed from Toyoda to Toyota for three reasons:
(1) to differentiate the founders’ work from his personal life,
(2) ease of pronunciation
(3) to give the company a happy beginning as “Toyota” has eight strokes in katakana and eight is considered a lucky number in Japan.
In 1926 Sakichi started the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works that, due to the superiority of the Toyoda looms, became highly successful. Even today, Toyota produces highly praised spinning and weaving machines. However, to Sakichi’s credit he recognized that more than weaving machines, the automobile was the wave of the
The History of Toyota
For organizational convenience I will discuss Toyota history as follows:
• The start
• The 1940s
• The 1950s
• Etc.
The start. The Toyota Motor Corp. (TMC) had its beginning in 1933 when it was established as a division within the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, Ltd.
The founder of Toyota was Kiichiro Toyoda (1894–1952), the son of Sakichi Toyoda (1867–1930). The values that have underpinned Toyota success startedwith Sakichi who was the son of a carpenter. Sakichi went from carpentry, which he had learned from his father, to making looms for weaving. He then came up with many inventionsthat resulted in remarkable improvements in looms. For example, by 1924 he had developed the famous “Type G” automatic loom, but not without much of that “hard work and persistence.” One of the important features of Toyoda’s looms was a device that would automatically stop the loom should a thread break. This prevented any defective cloth from being produced. This concept of building into a machine features that prevent poor quality is know as jidoka and would become one of the TMC’s two “pillars” of the Toyota Production System (TPS)
According to Wikipedia (Sakichi Toyoda, 2006) Sakichi is often referred to as the “King of Japanese Inventors” and as the “father of the Japanese industrial revolution.”
Toyota Motor Corporation the name was changed from Toyoda to Toyota for three reasons:
(1) to differentiate the founders’ work from his personal life,
(2) ease of pronunciation
(3) to give the company a happy beginning as “Toyota” has eight strokes in katakana and eight is considered a lucky number in Japan.
In 1926 Sakichi started the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works that, due to the superiority of the Toyoda looms, became highly successful. Even today, Toyota produces highly praised spinning and weaving machines. However, to Sakichi’s credit he recognized that more than weaving machines, the automobile was the wave of the