The Man

1912

The Automotive Hall of Fame records that Taiichi Ohno was born in 1912 in Dailan, China. It gives the year and that spelling of the city. It does not give the day. ¹

Christoph Roser, writing on the anniversary of the death, gives the day as 29 February 1912 and spells the city Dalian, during the Japanese presence in Manchuria. The day is his account, not the Hall of Fame’s. ²

1932

The Hall of Fame says he graduated that year from Nagoya Higher Technical School, now the Nagoya Institute of Technology, with a degree in mechanical engineering, and was hired at Toyoda Automatic Loom Works Ltd., now Toyota Industries Corporation. ¹

Roser calls the school Nagoya Technical High School and writes that there was no further formal education beyond a high-school diploma. The two pages do not agree on the school. ²

1943

The Hall of Fame says he moved to the Toyota Motor Company in 1943. Three years later he was promoted to manage Machine Shop #2 and #3 at the Koromo Plant. Its timeline says that in 1946 he started developing the Toyota Production System there. ¹

1948

In 1948, the Hall of Fame says, he and Eiji Toyoda began working on ideas to raise productivity and cut wasted resources. The same page says Just-in-Time was already the philosophy of Sakichi Toyoda and his son Kiichiro, first used in the loom works. Toyota’s own history page tells that origin differently. It credits the automatic loom, and jidoka, to Sakichi, and the Just-in-Time idea to Kiichiro. ^{1 3}

The ranks

The Hall of Fame’s list continues. Plant general manager for machining at Koromo in 1949. A director of the motor company in 1954. A first visit to the United States in 1956. Plant general manager at Motomachi in 1960. Managing director in 1964. Senior managing director in 1970. Executive vice president in 1975. ¹

It says he resigned in 1978, was appointed senior manager, and remained a consultant to the company until 1982. Roser writes that he never rose past vice president, left in 1978, and became chairman of Toyoda Gosei, which Roser calls an affront. Those are not the same story. The disagreement is set out in The Controversy. ^{1 2}

1990

The Hall of Fame says he died in 1990 at the age of 78. Roser writes that the date was 28 May 1990, in Toyota City, from heart failure. ^{1 2}

The books he is said to have published are in The Words. No sentence from them is on this wall. The pages were not in front of us.

Footnotes

1. 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/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

2. Twenty-five Years after Ohno. Christoph Roser. AllAboutLean.com. 2015. https://www.allaboutlean.com/ohno-25-years/. Retrieved 28 October 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

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