In the modern context with widening market preference the necessity is to have a large variety of products. Obviously with a large variety of products, the life of the product is limited as well as the volume. This means modularization and standardization is necessary in order to reduce the product development time and cost. In this scenario, the economy of scope (variety) is more relevant than economy of scale. For this purpose one requires flexibility of products and flow manufacturing. They require multi-functional machines and control in real time.

Please see this table to understand the change in car variants over the years. Compare this with the only Black Ford T model. You can understand the Scope as is practiced today. Some of the components of Toyota Production System such as Pull system (Kanban), SMED, setup size of 1, etc.help in this direction. Thanks to flexible systems we can now have a car assembly line where each car can be different in terms of color, options,etc. That promotes scope or variety in manufacturing.

Nageswara. This is a wonderful answer. Thanks a lot!. Are there other features of Post-Fordism? And, also why is it called Toyotism? As you said, all automobile companies have a large number of models, not just Toyota?

Thank you Debi for your compliments but that is part of our work. Toyota has been improving their manufacturing processes continuously with various small steps as part of a philosophy called continuous improvement. A good history can be found here: (http://www.toyota-global.com/company/vision_philosophy/toyota_production_system/origin_of_the_toyota_production_system.html)

Taiichi Ohno with backing from the management has revolutionized the manufacturing with all these aspects. So it is a philosophy built on reducing waste, continuous improvement, decentralized autonomy, and just in time throughout the manufacturing enterprise. So depending upon the segment of manufacturing the methods were developed and adopted (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261364870_Toyota_Production_System?ev=prf_pub) that are now practiced worldwide.

I am not sure if people call it as Toyotism, but Toyota calls it as Toyota Production System and many people call it as “Lean Manufacturing” as coined by Jim Womack, Dan Jones, and Daniel Roos from MIT in their book “The Machine that Changed the World”. It is a must read for anyone interested in Lean Manufacturing.

All automobile manufacturers have a large variety of models but in the early 1970’s they did not utilize the synergy of modularization. That is another concept which brings a lot of variety with a small number of modules as now practiced by everybody. Examples can be seen in Casio calculators or digital watches. Most of them have the same internal electronic module but the functionality is slightly altered for the model through software switches giving us the feeling of variety. Since the same module is used in all of them it can be manufactured in volumes of millions thereby reducing its cost.

Data Toyota Production System

Nageswara, I salute you for your clarity and the references you have cited. Thanks sooooooooooooooooo very much.

Things are far more clear to me now. thanks a ton. Yes, TPS and Toyotism. Even though it is your domain, but I have to deal with this issue in management of Flexibility, which is a part of my course on "strategic people management."

You are an amazing teacher. God bless!

I think one major pblm wid fordism was dat it resulted in bored disatisfied n alienated workforce. As a mode of production it demanded large quantities of unskilled labor which is nwadaya replaced by post fordism where there is a demand for multiskilled n flexible labor that is familiar wid new technologies and doesnt need supervision

To continue discussion further an example of use of same parts across multiple cars is Toyota. Many parts including engines between Camry, Avalon and Lexus ES are common. That helps Toyota to make these parts is large volume to reduce their cost.