Toyota began applying a “supermarket” pull idea in a machine shop: downstream processes took what they needed, and upstream processes replenished what was consumed. This early experiment set the direction for kanban as a practical way to support just-in-time production (making only what is needed, when needed, in the amount needed).
Toyota’s Motomachi Plant began production in August 1959, expanding Toyota’s capacity and helping standardize flow across major passenger-car processes. As Toyota’s scale grew, the need for tighter coordination of parts and work between processes became more urgent—conditions that later made kanban more valuable and easier to spread.
Toyota introduced Total Quality Control (TQC) in June 1961 to improve product quality through organization-wide participation and stronger coordination between departments. Better quality control supported kanban’s logic, because pull systems depend on stable processes and fewer defects interrupting flow.
In July 1962, Toyota conducted its first company-wide TQC audit, with top leadership inspecting departments and checking how management systems were working. The audit helped expose gaps in coordination and fact-based problem solving, reinforcing the need for disciplined, standardized routines—important foundations for effective kanban use.
Toyota reports that a new kanban management system was adopted at all plants in 1963. With kanban cards specifying what parts were needed, where, and when, plants could move materials in smaller, demand-driven quantities and reduce in-process inventory while surfacing operational problems that needed fixing.
Taiichi Ohno’s rise in Toyota’s leadership helped institutionalize Toyota Production System practices, including just-in-time methods supported by kanban. Stronger leadership support mattered because kanban requires consistent rules across departments rather than isolated experiments.
By 1965, Toyota extended kanban beyond its own plants to retrieving parts from suppliers. Toyota also explained the methods to suppliers and encouraged adoption, beginning a supplier-side rollout that connected external deliveries to actual consumption rather than forecasts alone.
Toyota continued expanding capacity with new production sites in the mid-to-late 1960s, such as the Takaoka Plant starting production in September 1966. As production volumes and product lines grew, kanban’s standardized signaling helped align material flow across more lines and locations.
A widely cited account places the development of the Toyota Production System—by Taiichi Ohno and Eiji Toyoda—across 1948 to 1975. This matters for kanban because it frames the period when Toyota moved from experiments to a mature, company-wide production and logistics system built around pull, just-in-time, and continuous improvement.
In 1975, Taiichi Ohno became Toyota’s executive vice president, marking how central TPS practices had become to Toyota’s core management. By this point, kanban had moved from a tool inside plants to part of a broader operating system that Toyota also taught to suppliers.
Kanban's invention and rollout within Toyota (1953–1975)