The Dilemma of Toyota Production System Implementation: A Case Study of Taiwan Machine Tool Industries

Recently, many enterprises have implemented the Toyota production system (TPS) in order to improve their production performance and competitiveness. However, some of those enterprises which implemented TPS couldn’t improve performance, even led to worse production performance. Dr. Goldratt thought the reason enterprises adopted TPS finally failed was due to their basic production environments was different of Toyota. Toyota Production System is built up in a stable environment, but most companies weren’t stable as Toyota. Besides, enterprises implemented TPS did not follow the Ohno’s four steps may also lead to poor performance. This study discusses whether Taiwan Machine Tool Industries is in three different dimensions of the instability of the production environment. Also, we study that in the unstable environment, the companies follow Ohno’s four steps could have better improvement than which not follow.