{"id":70106,"date":"2022-06-20T15:15:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-20T19:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=70106"},"modified":"2025-09-03T16:05:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T20:05:04","slug":"toyota-company-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/toyota-company-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Toyota Company History: The Start of Toyota’s Success"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is Toyota’s company history? How did lean manufacturing become popular?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In The Toyota Way<\/a><\/em>, Jeffrey Liker recounts Toyota’s history as a car manufacturing company. He explains the beginning of the Toyota Production System, better known as lean manufacturing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading to learn more about the history of Toyota.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Editor\u2019s note: This article is part of Shortform\u2019s guide to success<\/a>. If you like what you read here, there\u2019s plenty more to check out in the guide!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Brief History of Toyota and Lean Manufacturing<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Where does Toyota’s company history start? Toyota began as a family business. Inventor Sakichi Toyoda, inspired by a desire to save his mother and grandmother from the arduous work of spinning wool on manual looms, invented a steam-powered loom in the late 1800s. Over the following years, he continuously improved the loom\u2019s design<\/strong>. One of these improvements was a mechanism that stopped the loom automatically when a thread broke (this later became jidoka<\/em><\/strong>, a central Toyota principle). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1937, Sakichi\u2019s son Kiichiro sold the patent rights to an English weaving company and used the capital to found the Toyota Motor Corporation. While he was visiting the English company, Kiichiro noted the inefficient production processes<\/strong>. He made sketches of the plant layout, timed the stages, and even counted the workers\u2019 footsteps, coming away with ideas that eventually became the Toyota Production System (TPS)<\/strong>. He called his system just-in-time<\/strong>, another central Toyota principle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Japan\u2019s economic devastation following WWII meant that right from the beginning Toyota was contending with low demand, high inflation, cash flow problems, and meager factory space, all of which made efficiency and fast problem-solving a matter of survival<\/strong>. As conditions improved, this ingrained frugality persisted, eventually helping Toyota to become the world\u2019s biggest automaker<\/a> and the ninth-largest company in the world by revenue<\/a> in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toyota didn\u2019t originally use the term \u201clean manufacturing\u201d: This came from English-language analyses of Toyota\u2019s practices<\/a>. The original lean principles later evolved into field-specific versions such as agile software development<\/a> and lean startup<\/a> methodology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well-Told Corporate Histories Build Strong Cultures<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Liker comments that working at Toyota means constantly hearing and repeating stories about Toyota\u2019s history. This practice is probably one of the reasons that Toyota\u2019s corporate culture is so strong and cohesive: Experts say that company histories help to create a shared identity, acting as maps that link the past of the company with its present and future. In Toyota\u2019s case, sharing stories about the origins of concepts such as jidoka <\/em>and just-in-time helps employees to see how they might do the same in their daily work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Business historians John T. Seaman Jr. and George David Smith point out that company stories are excellent resources for leaders<\/a>. Stories can unite employees and communicate the overarching purpose of an organization in a subtle yet meaningful way. Leaders can also deliberately use them to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n