Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Usa Inc

Briefly Introduce:

In 1985, Toyota Motor Manufacturing USA, Inc. (TMM) unveiled its plan to open an $800 million Greenfield plant in Kentucky. In 1988, TMM Japan began production on a new plant located in the US. The plant was modeled after the Tsutsumi plant and was to replace the majority of the Camry’s that were being imported from Japan. As part of its setup the Tsutsumi production line was copied and employees were trained in the TPS process. TPS is based on reducing costs through the elimination of waste.

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 manager of the assembly plant Doug Friesen was responsible for solving these two problems.

Answer:

1. Toyota Production System provided two guiding principles:

Just-In-Time(JIT): Produce only what was needed, only how much was needed, and only when it was needed. Any deviation from true production needs was condemned as waste.

Jidoka: Make any production problems instantly self-evident and stop producing whenever problems were detected. In other words, jidoka insisted on building in quality in the production process and condemned any deviation from value-addition as waste.

TPS included some components as well:

Kaizen: The literally means “changing something for the better”. As soon as anyone established a standard way of doing a job, that person set out to demolish it proactively, to install an even better way.

Andon board: a kind of monitor which can reflect where the production problems are. It can help the team leaders to resolve the...