Can't confirm or the reverse, but I do remember Taiichi Ohno's name being mentioned multiple times in the book (The Toyota Way), which I bought and read some years ago. Interesting book.

One of the things mentioned was the concepts of muri and muda, related to (not) wasting (stuff), IIRC [1]. Related to Kaizen [2].

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=japanese+word+muri+and+muda&

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muri_(Japanese_term)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muda_(Japanese_term)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mura_(Japanese_term)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen