Toyota’s history rests on key textile invention | Long Island Newsday

Kiichiro and Eiji Toyoda
Kiichiro and Eiji Toyoda around a loom

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It was a single thread that gave a man a dream, created a little history and displayed the talents of a remarkable mind and a family with resourcefulness in its genes.

Sakichi Toyoda wasn’t all that interested in fast-moving machinery, just machines in motion. It’s how the Toyota Production System began. It’s how an inventor with a sharp eye and even sharper mind built an empire…

 

 

 

 

 

Michel Baudin‘s insight:

A summary of Toyota history with the usual omissions:

  1. Automatic shuttle change. The ability to stop when thread broke was not the only innovation of Toyoda looms. Automatic shuttle change was equally important, not just to looms but as a forerunner of autonomation, the Toyota approach to automation.
  2. The German connection. Toyota learned much about car technology from Germany through Kazuo Kumabe and his research team, in particular reverse-engineering a 1936 DKW. The concept of Takt also came from the German Junkers company via the Mitsubishi Aircraft plant in Nagoya.

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