Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Inc.

A detailed Summary of Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Inc.

Toyota Motor Manufacturing USA, Inc. (TMM) encountered product proliferation problems with defective seats due mainly to the company's deviation from its normal production plan and lack of a recovery system. In April 1992, TMM's run ratio dropped from 95% to 85%, meaning that 45 less cars were being produced per shift, which in turn translated into overtime for the workers. As a result, too many cars needed off-line operations of one type or another before they could go on to shipping. The main source of the problem was the seats defects in the cars, in which case the car would go through the assembly line with the defective seat still in it. Then the car would proceed to the Code 1 clinic area where workers would try to fix the defects, or it would be moved to the overflow parking area to await a new seat to be delivered from the supplier. This process is an exception to the quality control process in TMM. According to Exhibit 10, in April 1992 the number of andon pulls during the first shift for the rear seat increased dramatically, from about 20 pulls in the beginning of April to about 120 pulls at the end of the month; pulls for the second shift also increased greatly. It should be noted that the seat itself poses sever

The Toyota Productions System (TPS) was created to help deal with the challenge of cutting costs dramatically without the scale economies that American firms enjoyed in order to satisfy customers with variety, quality, and timeliness, all at a reasonable price. In order to try to achieve this, TPS aimed at cost reduction through thorough waste elimination. Since identifying waste was not an easy task, there were two guiding principles that TPS provided to smooth the progress of this process. The first was the JIT production principle. TMM should only produce what was needed, only how much was needed, and only when it was needed. The other principle was that of jidoka. TMM should make any production problems instantly self-evident and if problems were detected it should stop producing. These two principles put high emphasis on the belief that deviations from true production needs and the addition of value were condemned as wastes, and they also made it crucial that plant people be alerted to deviations from any plans about how production was to proceed. The current routine for handling defective seats deviates from the two TPS principles in a couple of ways. First of all, the high level of defective cars contradicts the JIT principle in that it is a deviation of the true production and therefore considered a waste. The current routine also contradicts the jidoka principle in that the production process does not stop whenever a problem is detected; this detracted from building quality. Secondly, the routine allows for the ignoring of the work ethic of TPS, which is to stick to the facts and get to the rot of the problem. Instead of adhering to these principles and attitudes, the plant is trying to handle defective seats with off-line operations. It does not try to analyze the problem with the "Five Why's" exercise as it is should. Defective inventory continued through the assembly line, in contrast to the jidoka principle, and eventually accumulation in the overflow parking area began, which in turn created the need for overtime, two happening that contradict the JIT principle. Finally, the current routine not only contradicted TPS' guidelines for handling problems, it also ignored the need for methodical thinking to achieve kaizen, or "change for better." Workers at TMM were supposed to be set on trying actively to continuously find better ways of doing a certa

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Approximate Word count = 1612
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

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