Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Usa, Inc. Case
Toyota Motor Manufacturing, USA, Inc.
Operations Management
July 15, 2013
In the early 1980s, Japanese auto makers contemplated building cars in North America. At that time, it was unclear whether cars produced outside Japan could live up to their hard-earned reputation of high quality at low cost. In 1992 Toyota meets a
Serious problem, a growing number of cars were sitting off the line with defective seats or with no seats at all. Today, we will talk about this case and offer some our suggestions.
We know TMM’s sole seat supplier was KFS, who operated on a sequential pull system which synchronize with TMM’s assembly line. However, the case indicates there’s quality deficiency on TMM’s production which reduced the run ratio to 85% from 95% and impacted regular delivery.
According our analyzing, we think the seats mainly account for quality deficiency. Not much long before, TMM re-designed the back seat by replacing its metal hooks with plastic ones. Given the weaker strength of plastic hooks than metal ones, it was easier to break off, causing frequent interruption on TMM’s assembly line and therefore, reducing efficiency of production as well. The reason attribute to such problem is not clear, however, through intensive meditation, the possible reasons can be confined within following aspects:
Defective design of hooks on seats.
Mishandling of assembly workers.
Defective quality of rough material applied by seat supplier.
Deficiency on TPS.
We can ascertain the exact reason by scrutinizing above aspects respectively.
Defective design of hooks on seats.
The defect of hook caused run ratio at TMM reduced 10%, however, at TMC, sharing same production system and design of hooks, did not encountered same problem as which happened at TMM. Therefore, the design of hook can be excluded from possible reasons.
2. Mishandling of assembly workers.
Learned from the case, there are new workers joined TMM in early April. Some of them damaged the seats by
Operations Management
July 15, 2013
In the early 1980s, Japanese auto makers contemplated building cars in North America. At that time, it was unclear whether cars produced outside Japan could live up to their hard-earned reputation of high quality at low cost. In 1992 Toyota meets a
Serious problem, a growing number of cars were sitting off the line with defective seats or with no seats at all. Today, we will talk about this case and offer some our suggestions.
We know TMM’s sole seat supplier was KFS, who operated on a sequential pull system which synchronize with TMM’s assembly line. However, the case indicates there’s quality deficiency on TMM’s production which reduced the run ratio to 85% from 95% and impacted regular delivery.
According our analyzing, we think the seats mainly account for quality deficiency. Not much long before, TMM re-designed the back seat by replacing its metal hooks with plastic ones. Given the weaker strength of plastic hooks than metal ones, it was easier to break off, causing frequent interruption on TMM’s assembly line and therefore, reducing efficiency of production as well. The reason attribute to such problem is not clear, however, through intensive meditation, the possible reasons can be confined within following aspects:
Defective design of hooks on seats.
Mishandling of assembly workers.
Defective quality of rough material applied by seat supplier.
Deficiency on TPS.
We can ascertain the exact reason by scrutinizing above aspects respectively.
Defective design of hooks on seats.
The defect of hook caused run ratio at TMM reduced 10%, however, at TMC, sharing same production system and design of hooks, did not encountered same problem as which happened at TMM. Therefore, the design of hook can be excluded from possible reasons.
2. Mishandling of assembly workers.
Learned from the case, there are new workers joined TMM in early April. Some of them damaged the seats by