Eiji Toyoda, a member of Toyota’s founding family who helped create the super-efficient Toyota Way production method, has died at age of 100.
Toyota said in a statement that Toyoda, a cousin of the Japanese automaker’s founder Kiichiro Toyoda, died of heart failure at Toyota Memorial Hospital in Toyota city, central Japan.
Eiji Toyoda served as president from 1967 to 1982. He became chairman in 1982, and continued in advisory positions up to his death.
A graduate of the prestigious University of Tokyo with a degree in mechanical engineering, he joined Toyoda Automatic Loom Works in 1936.
Source: The Associated Press via Detroit Free Press
