The Toyota Production System: Endurance through System Philosophy

I can remember looking for Herbie in 1992.  We were on our own; our small aircraft business had been sold by British Aerospace and we were in trouble. We experimented with Theory of Constraints initially to try and sort out performance.  We’d been told we were an A configuration set-up.  Not that it helped us.  We somehow couldn’t turn the book The Goal by Goldratt into reality.  After some months we opted for the Kawasaki Production System, and it transformed our approach, speed of implementation, and engagement.  It was another 5 years before I was exposed to the Toyota Production System (TPS) and realised how little I really knew about improving throughput.

Every decade brings a new “revolution” in improvement thinking

We’ve seen Theory of Constraints, Six Sigma, Agile, and countless hybrids. Each dressed up as an operating system with promised transformation; each never reaching the heights of success.  The upside?  Well, us consultants always seem to make some lolly.  You could hear the operational excellence crew rubbing their hands in joy when some bright spark came up with the idea of combining Lean and Six Sigma.  What a win! Another go on the merry-go-round.

And yet, one system endures, and improves itself without transplant surgery on its vital organs..
The Toyota Production System (TPS) has not only survived every management fad but has outperformed them in clarity, adaptability, and results.

Why?
Because TPS is not a programme or a method. It is a philosophy of performance and learning, built on principles that remain relevant through every technological and organisational change.

The Heart of TPS: A Living System, Not a Toolkit

Most improvement frameworks focus on a single dimension:

• TOC focuses on constraints.
• Six Sigma focused on variation until it became a pernicious method of cost reduction, some distance from its origins in Motorola.
• Agile, with its sprints that can take a team down rabbit holes, egged on by the scrum master.

TPS focuses on the whole system, a self-correcting relationship between people, process, and purpose.
Its dual pillars, Just-in-Time and Jidoka, form a self-balancing loop: flow reveals problems; built-in quality makes them visible; human intelligence learns from them.

It is the only operating system, in my view, that is truly holistic and treats performance and learning as the same pursuit.

The Measure of Endurance: Generations, Not Projects

Most improvement programmes are episodic. They arrive with training, metrics, and consultants, and fade when leadership moves on.
 It is one hundred and one years since Toyoda patented his Jidoka device, which has formed a lasting pillar of TPS. Toyota’s system has endured across four generations of leadership and global scaling, with all principles (both leadership and technical) being adopted fully in different cultures on different continents. It’s clearly not a Japanese thing, but a TPS thing.

Why? Because TPS embeds its logic in daily work:

• Problem-solving is a routine, not an event.
• Leadership is developmental, not directive.
• Measures drive thinking, not reporting.
• Every system and tool, from kanban to heijunka to standardised work, exists to support this continuity of thought and improvement.

The Difference: Depth of Philosophy

The endurance of TPS rests on three interlocking dimensions that no other framework matches in depth:

Endurance Is a Test of Truth

TPS has outlasted every “new wave” as it evolved internally over 80 years.

Its principles: flow, respect, challenge, kaizen, all adapt to new technologies without losing coherence.  With AI and the IOT, we can be assured that the pillars of TPS will still stand and remain uncompromised.  For if AI is not helping to eliminate defects or improve flow, it will not have a role to play.

Endurance, in the end, is the ultimate validation of truth.

The Three Ms: The Enduring Compass of TPS

One reason the Toyota Production System has endured is its constant return to the Three Ms: Muda (waste), Mura (unevenness), and Muri (overburden).
Where other improvement programmes hunt for visible waste alone (mianly through the cost lens) Toyota recognises that waste is only the symptom; its roots lie in unevenness and overburden.
By teaching leaders and teams to see how Mura creates Muri, and both generate Muda, Toyota built a self-diagnosing operating philosophy.

This working triangle is the moral compass of TPS. It prevents short-term gains from undermining long-term stability and human capability. When flow is disrupted, managers don’t just “fix inefficiency” they ask which of the Three Ms has reappeared and why.
That recursive logic: smoothing flow, reducing overburden, and eliminating waste is what allows TPS to evolve without losing coherence.

Timelines

When I look at the timeline below it started to make more sense to me how TPS has endured.  It is a remarkable story of not abandoning well-founded principles and, over time, building on them, rather than jettisoning them for the next new thing.  I could not fit all the developments for Toyota on the timeline, but I strongly suggest taking a look at the detailed version on their website.  The point is, when compared with emerging concepts like Six Sigma or TOC, it measures up in its profundity.  

Final Reflection

Here are a couple of numbers that I think help remind us of the endurance of  TPS.

In 2009, at the height of the financial crisis GE, a Six Sigma company, laid off 35,000 people.

Toyota rode the crisis.