Toyota

Toyota Case Study Group: 1

1. As Doug Friesen, what would you do to address the problem? Where would you focus your attention and solution efforts?

The major problem that Doug, manager of assembly, needs to address is of Seat Problems. Due to seat problems, production level is decreasing and which resultant leads to increase in overtime works, lead-time and off-time vehicle inventory.

The major problem that is observed is improper seat quality management in KSF. Most of the seat problems were occurring because of this mismanagement like, wrong, missing and broken parts, wrinkles and missing bolster.

Also, KSF inspection of seats before shipping is not proper. There need to check the method followed by KFS while inspection of seats because several of defective seats are being send as fit. May be by providing more training to the worker this problem could be solved.

Also, there was ineffective feedback system, due to which Doug was not able to reach the specific solution for the seat problems. So, by properly sharing and discussing all the feedbacks may gave best optimum solution to the problem.

2. What options exist? What would you recommend? Why?

The options for the seat problem are: -

1. Fixing of bolts and hooks in a proper manner – As the members of the teams were trying to fix the bolt in the front seats they tend to shot the bolt at a wrong angle because of which cross threading happens. If they can work for 30 sec. more on it then they will be able to solve this problem at that particular moment.

2. Company was following JIT method because of which seats reaches at TMM on time but because of this there is no time left for solving any problem related to the quality of the seat at the time of installation.

3. Back Up for seats – As seats are the delicate object to be installed in a car so any mishandling can cause damage to it very easily which can cause problem while installation to stop this kind...