Toyota Motor Manufacturing Usa Case Study

...

The calculation demonstrates:

1) The decrease in per-shift production is close to 50 cars.

Most of this can be blamed on the seat problem.

2) Overtime capacity will cost TMM in excess of $16,000 per shift due to producing the missing cars. R

=> As a result, this translates to around $8.4 Million per year

(Considering two shifts and a 5-day workweek.)

Toyota’s philosophy worked on finding and dealing the found problem using Five Why’s approach. They are considered that causes by the seat problem.

Besides that, the replacement is not immediately available; consequently the material flaws and missing parts cannot be corrected on line.

=>The larger amount of safety stock that is near the seat station is the counted option to meet the correct set-to-car matching without the under JIT problem.

However, there is almost 60% of all defects which was caused by material flaws and missing part. Clearly, lets look back the history changes in Toyota, the problem began in March 1992 when Toyota increase the seat varieties to 50%, the problem keeps going up when more varieties are planned to reach more than 50%; therefore, Toyota is not facing with incompetence problem-KFS.

Recommendation:

As the relevant tooling for the hook was costly and it was relatively vulnerable compared to the metal, so it was feasible to decrease the variety by converting back to metal hooks instead of using the plastic for all cars, or the hook can be redesigned with better materials and thereby avoiding the breakage frequency. If both materials had similar probabilities in terms of damage, then it’s necessary to focus on the quality control department in order to detect the unqualified hooks before going to the production line. Meanwhile, workers should follow the principle jidoka while checking the defective seats and then pull the and on cord to inform supervisor to deal with this problem so as to move to the next step efficiently.

Reference List :

Mishina K and Takeda K, MBA 93 (1995), 9-693-019 rev. Harvard Business School Pubilshing , Boston , MA 02163.

http://www.slideshare.net/ishanparekh/toyota-motor-manufacturing-inc-case-study

https://rashmitenneti.wordpress.com/2015/02/09/toyota-motor-manufacturing-kentucky-framed-seat-case-study/