Toyota and Changes in Strategy 1. The Toyota Motor Company (then Toyota Automatic Loom) began small-scale manufacturing of automobiles in Japan in 1935, and later began making trucks. After the destruction of World War II and a crippling labor dispute in 1949, it was a small and struggling truck manufacturer selling only about 300 vehicles per month. Then orders for thousands of trucks came in from the American Defense Department for support of the Korean War. Profits from this sale gave the company money to finance the production of passenger cars. 2. Toyota had already developed a prototype small car, and had studied Ford's production lines. The company invested in modern manufacturing equipment, eventually succeeded in achieving an enterprise union, adopted the lifetime employment system for its regular assembly workers, invited employee input in decisions, developed a continuous improvement approach, and introduced the just-in-time inventory system. Formal and informal trade barriers provided Toyota and other Japanese manufacturers with a protected domestic market in the post-World War II years. 3. As the scale of production rose and costs declined in its Japanese plants, Toyota decided to try to export to the American market. The first cars were introduced in the United