Toyota's founding as an independent company through the postwar crisis. Wartime truck production under military constraints taught Toyota to produce with minimal resources — a lesson that shaped TPS's obsession with waste elimination. The postwar period brought economic crisis: kiichiro-toyoda resigned as president in 1950 after layoffs, a trauma that shaped Toyota's subsequent commitment to employment security. taiichi-ohno joined the automobile operation in 1943 and began his first experiments — including the multi-machine operation experiments that were the seed of one-piece-flow. eiji-toyoda visited Ford's Rouge plant in 1950, learning both what to emulate and what to transcend.