Toyota's 1951 idea system: 250,000 worker proposals a year by 1973

In 1951 Japan's carmakers were fighting for survival against America's Big Three. Managing Officer Eiji Toyoda visited a Ford plant, saw its suggestion system, and brought it back as the benchmark for Toyota's own Creative Idea Suggestion System (創意くふう提案制度).

Make proposing improvements part of every job: any employee submits ideas, however small, and management must adopt them — creativity becomes a system, not a talent.

Toyota set twin goals — use every employee's creativity and deepen their commitment — then built the machinery: a committee chaired by Managing Officer Shoichi Saito, monthly themes such as maintenance and quality, subcommittees at every plant, an 800-member screening board, and the 1953 slogan 'Good Thinking, Good Products'. Ideas could even be submitted verbally.

789 ideas in the first year (1951) grew to 20,000 by 1967, 168,000 in fiscal 1972 and over 250,000 in 1973 from 43,000 employees, with more than 70% adopted; the adoption rate rose from 29% in 1956 to 76% in 1972. One adopted piston-ring suggestion saved Toyota at least ¥24 million (about $91,000) a year.

In 1951, with Japan's car industry battling America's Big Three, Managing Officer Eiji Toyoda visited a Ford plant and saw a suggestion system that rewarded workers' ideas on the production line. He brought the idea home; in May 1951 Toyota launched its Creative Idea Suggestion System, a formal program that made proposing improvements part of every employee's job.

The system had two stated objectives: fully use each employee's personal creativity, and deepen each employee's commitment to the company's progress. Toyota supported it with a committee, monthly themes like maintenance and quality, subcommittees at every plant, and an 800-member screening board; even verbal suggestions were accepted, and in 1953 the company adopted the slogan 'Good Thinking, Good Products'.

The numbers compounded: 789 ideas in the first year, more than 20,000 by 1967, 168,000 in fiscal 1972, and over 250,000 in 1973 from 43,000 employees — with adoption climbing from 29% in 1956 to 76% in 1972. One piston-ring suggestion saved at least ¥24 million (about $91,000) a year, and the habit became Toyota's kaizen DNA.

It treated ideas as a volume game: no suggestion was too small, so participation mattered more than brilliance.

It paired asking with answering — an 800-member board guaranteed every idea got judged, which kept employees submitting.

It connected money, morale and improvement: rewards, monthly themes and public exhibits made creativity a routine, not an event.

It was institutionalized in training and slogans ('Good Thinking, Good Products'), so the practice outlived its founders.

A suggestion program works when management is obliged to answer: Toyota paired open volume (any idea counts, even verbal) with an 800-member judging board — so 'ideas wanted' became 'ideas used'.

The system ran for more than 70 years. Toyota's official history records cumulative totals of one million suggestions by 1974, five million by 1981, ten million by 1984, twenty million by 1988, thirty million by 1995 and forty million by 2011. Toyota still presents the system as the root of its kaizen culture, and the slogan 'Good Thinking, Good Products' remains displayed at its plants.