The first formal codification of TPS as a written document. Compiled by Isao Kato in 1973 as an internal Toyota training manual, with a foreword by taiichi-ohno entitled "Practice Over Theory" (実践優先). Authors include fujio-cho, K. Sugimori, and S. Uchikawa.
Overview
Toyota drafted this internal manual for three purposes: codification of TPS practices that had developed organically over two decades, training and development of Toyota employees, and explanation of TPS to suppliers who were being brought into the Toyota production network.
The handbook covers the core TPS concepts — just-in-time, jidoka, kanban, standard-work, and the elimination of waste — in practical, operational terms suited to shop-floor implementation. It predates all public TPS publications, including Ohno's 1978 book.
Significance
Ohno's foreword — "Practice Over Theory" — captures the fundamental TPS epistemology: the system cannot be learned from documents but must be practiced on the gemba. The irony of writing a handbook about a system that resists codification is characteristic of Ohno's paradoxical thinking.
The 1973 handbook circulated only within Toyota and its supplier network for decades. Its public availability (through Art of Lean and Paul Akers' annotated 2019 edition by Mark Warren) provides a rare primary source showing how TPS was taught internally before any Western codification.