What is the Toyota Production System?

The Toyota Production System (TPS) is a production system (sometimes called "lean manufacturing system" or "Just-in-Time (JIT) system") developed by the Toyota company based on the philosophy of eliminating all possible waste in the production line, while achieving the most efficient methods to perform the process activities in order to produce and deliver efficiently, quickly and with the required quality, the car ordered by the customer.

The TPS is the result of the establishment of a continuous improvement process in the production line.

There are two base concepts in the application of TPS:

Jidoka is the principle of immediately stopping the production machine when a defective product is detected, so this defective product does not go ahead in the process, preventing the production of defective items.

Just in Time indicates that each process in the production line should produce only the quantity that is needed by the next process in the continuous flow of the line, so inventories between process stations are avoided.

Reference:  Toyota Gobal site. http://www.toyota-global.com/company/vision_philosophy/toyota_production_system/