Toyota Production System and Kanban System (Sugimori, Kusunoki, Cho, Uchikawa, 1977)

The 1977 International Journal of Production Research paper by four members of Toyota’s Production Control Department, the first major academic description of the Toyota Production System and kanban system in English. It presents cost reduction through waste elimination and full use of workers’ capabilities as the two basic concepts, and explains just-in-time production, withdrawal by subsequent processes, production leveling, jidoka, and the respect-for-human system, including the kanban quantity equation.