I was fascinated to discover that Taiichi Ohno actually came up with the idea for pull when he was visiting the US, touring US auto manufacturing plants for ideas about how to improve Japanese manufacturing.

His inspiration came not from the US auto plants but from a visit to a Piggly Wiggly store (Piggly Wiggly was the first of the self-serve supermarkets that are now commonplace everywhere).

What inspired him was when he saw customers taking items from the shelves and employees restocking the shelves. He went back to the Toyota plant and had each production line display its “wares” (products that line was capable of making). When someone in the following line picked up an item, they quickly remade that item and replaced it. This turned each line into a shopkeeper and each subsequent line as the previous line’s customer.

Pull manufacturing was born :)