Founded by sakichi-toyoda, this textile machinery company is where the Toyota industrial group — and the jidoka principle — originated. Sakichi's automatic loom, which stopped itself when a thread broke, was the first embodiment of "automation with a human touch." The sale of Sakichi's loom patents to Platt Brothers of England in 1929 for £100,000 provided the seed capital for kiichiro-toyoda's automobile venture. The loom works' engineering culture — practical, improvement-oriented, grounded in gemba observation — shaped the organizational DNA that taiichi-ohno would channel into TPS. Today known as Toyota Industries Corporation.