The Toyota Production System (TPS) (トヨタ生産方式) is the framework and philosophy organizing the manufacturing facilities at Toyota and the interaction of these facilities with the suppliers and customers. The main goal of the TPS is to eliminate waste (無駄, muda). There are 7 kinds of waste found in the TPS:

1. Defects
2. Overproduction
3. Transportation
4. Waiting
5. Inventory
6. Motion
7. Overprocessing

Toyota was able to greatly reduce cost and inventory using the TPS, enabling it to become one of the three largest companies in the world. Due to this stellar success of the production philosophy many of these methods have been copied by other manufacturing companies.

Commonly used terminology in TPS:

• Just in time (ジャストインタイム) (JIT)
• Kanban (看板, also かんばん) (engl.: Sign, Index Card)
• Muda (無駄, also ムダ) (engl.: Waste)
• Heijunka (平準化) (engl.: Production Smoothing)
• Andon (アンドン) (engl.: Signboard)
• Pokayoke (ポカヨケ) (engl.: Foolproofing)
• Jidoka (自働化) (engl.: Autonomation - automation with human intelligence)
• Kaizen (改善) (engl.: Continuous Improvement)

References

Yasuhiro Monden: "Toyota Production System, An Integrated Approach to Just-In-Time", Third edition, Engineering Management Press, 1997

Jeffrey Liker: "The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer", First edition, McGraw-Hill, 2003, ISBN 0071392319