A bank-forced corporate split created the pull-order structure that matched just-in-time.

Evidence

The government first stimulated the Japanese car makers to expand production in the second half of 1948, but subsequently curbed demand through its anti-inflation measures in April 1949. As a result, the stock of unsold vehicles (still mainly trucks) mounted, and Toyota faced a grave liquidity crisis by the end of 1949. Banks saved the company from bankruptcy, but forced Toyota to split up into a production company (Toyota Motor) and a sales company (Toyota Sales) in April 1950 (Toyota, 1988, pp. 92, 104–105). This separation, discontinued only in 1982, was meant to prevent overproduction in the future. The ‘pull’ principle that a car was to be produced only when the sales company ordered one ‘resonated’ with the JIT principle pioneered by Ohno (Togo and Wartman, 1993, p. 103). — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 182

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: how external creditors, not managers, engineer the organizational forms later celebrated as strategic genius — financial crises as accidental organizational designers.
• SHARE: For the friend who loves Toyota/operations history: the JIT pull system was accidental collateral of a 1950 bank-imposed split into Toyota Motor and Toyota Sales.