Different papers have been presented and many discussions have been realized concerning about the Toyota Production System, from a macroeconomics point of view as well from an Industrial Engineering point of view. The problem is, that most of the time what is shown is a narrow understanding of the Toyota System, which is seen as a simple synonymy of Just-in-Time or Just-in-Time/ Total Quality Control. As a result, it seems that the Toyota System can be easily implemented in western companies. In fact, what happens is that western managers do not understand deeply the main concepts behind the Toyota System and its relationship with wide fields of Industrial knowledge. The main purpose of this paper is to present critically an analysis for the understanding of Production Systems, proposed by Shigeo Shingo : the Mechanism of the Production Function.
Production and Operations Management; Toyota System; Mechanism of the Production Function