Toyota’s living tradition of quality

Toyota has always taken great pride in delivering high-quality products and services. For almost 100 years, we’ve put our founding principles into practice, building a tradition of quality, then developing that tradition into living systems that ensure that our quality levels are always improving.

From day one, when the original Toyoda family business was based on weaving, we worked extremely hard to earn our customers’ approval and respect. The key to this was a set of core quality assurance principles, including ‘Customer First’, ‘Quality First’ and ‘Genchi Genbutsu’ (‘Go and See at the scene’).

Our system, based on the Andon Principle, was created by Sakichi Toyoda in 1924. It gave members of staff the power to stop the Type G-automatic loom machine whenever an issue occurred, simply by pressing a button or pulling a cord.

Over time we’ve developed and improved the way we apply these principles to meet new challenges at every organisational level of Toyota, from the shop floor to executive management.
But our focus has always been on our customers. We continually gather and analyse customer feedback to help us plan new products, raise quality standards and improve the way we work and the services we provide.
As well as customers, we also empower our employees to highlight problems immediately, ensuring that as soon as an issue is detected, it is promptly fixed.

The Andon Principle

The term Andon comes from the Japanese word for a paper lantern, referring to an illuminated signal notifying another of a problem.

Times have changed but this system is still in use today, with visual aids that highlight a problem where action is required in a specific area or workstation.

This ongoing process of putting principles into practice, listening to customers, trusting and empowering our employees has led us to develop numerous living quality systems.

Announcing our vehicle recall system

In 1969 we ran a series of high-profile newspaper advertisement features announcing a new vehicle recall system in Japan.

For example, our Total Quality Control process that helps us continuously improve the quality and reliability of our vehicles.

And the Toyota Production System (TPS) that increases production speed, quality and customer satisfaction. It includes Jidoka, Just-in-Time, and our other Quality protocols to produce vehicles quickly and efficiently while also meeting our high-quality standards and our customers’ requirements. 

Toyota Production System

In 1955, strongly supported by Toyota Executive Eiji Toyoda, engineer Taiichi Ohno and his team became the catalyst behind the Toyota Production System (TPS) that we know today.

Putting principles into practice, continuously learning and refining the way we work, constantly improving our knowledge, processes, products and services to deliver ever-higher quality levels in everything we do. 

For over 100 years, Toyota customers have always been able to expect this from us, and we’re committed to maintaining and extending this living tradition of quality for at least another 100 years.