Taiichi Ohno (1912-1990), the most important figure in manufacturing history after Henry Ford. Ohno joined toyoda-automatic-loom-works in 1932 and moved to toyota-motor-corporation in 1943. Over four decades, he developed TPS from scattered experiments into a complete production philosophy. Key contributions: just-in-time production, the kanban signaling system, the seven wastes taxonomy, pull-production (inspired by the American supermarket), and the relentless emphasis on gemba observation and kaizen improvement. Ohno was notoriously demanding — he taught through questions, not answers, and insisted that managers learn by standing on the factory floor. His management philosophy was crystallized in toyota-production-system-beyond-large-scale-production (1978) and workplace-management (1982). The most extensive record of his thinking is the 1984 oral history interview conducted by Shimokawa and Fujimoto. Ohno also wrote the foreword to the 1973 TPS handbook, Toyota's first formal codification of TPS as a training document. Partnered with shigeo-shingo on the technical practices (particularly smed and poka-yoke) that made TPS operational. Mentored fujio-cho and a generation of Toyota leaders. Built on w-edwards-deming's statistical quality methods and henry-ford's flow concepts, but created something neither had imagined.