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Despite a late entry in the global automobile industry and the devastation caused by the two World Wars, Japan''s automobile industry witnessed a rapid growth that transformed the country into the world''s leading automobile manufacturer by the turn of the 21st century. One of the major reasons behind this success had been the radical Japanese production system, devised by Taiichi Ohno of the Toyota Motor Company. The ''Toyota production system'' or the ''lean production system'', as it was called, focused on the elimination of waste at every step of the manufacturing process, empowered employees to take decisions for solving problems and helped to build conducive relations between the manufacturers and their suppliers. This resulted in a slew of high quality, low cost cars from Japan that put enormous competitive pressures on carmakers from other nations, especially the ''big three'' (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler) of the US. The case helps in understanding the factors that have made the Japanese production system a benchmark for the global automobile manufacturing business. A structured assignment ''604-031-4'' is available to accompany this case.