This book explains the principles and methods of the Toyota production system (TPS) at Toyota manufacturing and offers guidelines for implementing TPS in an organization. Coverage encompasses implementation steps, subsystems, and quantitative techniques. The section on humanized production systems has been expanded for this fourth edition, with material on cultivating the spontaneous kaizen mind, increasing worker morale through improvement activities, and increasing employee motivation through autonomous split-lines in an assembly plant. This edition also contains new discussions of how Toyota has changed in reaction to problems such as recalls, excess inventory, and the recent tsunami. There is new material on e-kanban, kaizen costing, mini-profit centers, and overcoming TPS implementation problems. The book includes numerous organizational charts and algorithms. Monden is professor emeritus at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)