The Legacy

Toyota’s own page does not leave the system as one man’s work. It says that with strong backing from Eiji Toyoda, Ohno helped establish it and set the basic frame of Just-in-Time. It says Eiji carried jidoka and Just-in-Time through, and that this let Toyota compete with companies in Europe and the United States. Sakichi and Kiichiro are on that page as the earlier roots. 1

Toyota’s American company history says that in 1984 Toyota and General Motors formed a joint venture to build vehicles in the United States. The name it gives is New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc., NUMMI, in Fremont, California. The same history says that in 1986 the first Toyota car assembled on American soil, a white Corolla FX16, came off that plant. 2

IndustryWeek wrote in 2004 that Toyota sent Fujio Cho to Kentucky to start manufacturing in the United States, and that Cho had been trained by Ohno. The article does not say he stood in a circle at NUMMI. That story is not added. 3

The Automotive Hall of Fame lists Ohno in its class of 2022. The honoree page gives the years 1912 to 1990 and calls him an engineer and former Toyota executive associated with the Toyota Production System. 4

How readers in the West learned the name is a separate claim. Christoph Roser points to The Machine That Changed the World, by Womack and Jones, as probably the best-known of the studies that followed Japanese cars into the United States. This room does not quote that book. No page of it was checked. 5

Footnotes

  1. Toyota Production System. Toyota Motor Corporation. 2026. https://global.toyota/en/company/vision-and-philosophy/production-system/. Retrieved 28 October 2026. ↩

  2. Company history. Toyota USA Newsroom. 2026. https://pressroom.toyota.com/company-history/. Retrieved 28 October 2026. ↩

  3. Step Inside the Circle. John Teresko. IndustryWeek. 2004. https://www.industryweek.com/leadership/companies-executives/article/21942244/step-inside-the-circle. Retrieved 28 October 2026. ↩

  4. Taiichi Ohno, honoree page. Automotive Hall of Fame. 2022. https://automotivehalloffame.org/honoree/taiichi-ohno/. Retrieved 28 October 2026. Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/2024/https://automotivehalloffame.org/honoree/taiichi-ohno/ ↩

  5. Twenty-five Years after Ohno. Christoph Roser. AllAboutLean.com. 2015. https://www.allaboutlean.com/ohno-25-years/. Retrieved 28 October 2026. ↩