Toyota Production System (TPS)

Biological Parallel

Ant colonies practice Toyota Production System principles without Toyota: workers pull tasks based on chemical signals (kanban), problems trigger colony-wide alarm pheromones (andon), and continuous improvement emerges from simple rules iterated millions of times (kaizen). A leaf-cutter ant colony processes 50 kilograms of leaves annually with zero inventory waste—leaves are cut, transported, and processed just-in-time for fungal cultivation. TPS is formalized biological efficiency, scaled from 500,000 ants to 500,000 workers.