Case Overview
Toyota Motor Manufacturing, USA (TMM) is a subsidiary of the Japanese Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC), which TMC was forced to open under political pressure from the US in 1985, to replace the bulk of Japanese imports of the very successful Camry.
TMC had to invest heavily in TMM to ensure its success (especially implementing the Toyota Production System for the first out of Japan), mainly in human infrastructure. Top and operations managers were flown out to the Tsutsumi plant in Japan, then hundreds of supervisors and team leaders were sent out of Tsutsumi to train the work force at the TMM plant. The method they employed for developing was persuasion, showing the real benefits of the TPS.
Production started remarkably well in 1988, and went on without major incident until the Camry model change in 1991, along with the wagon model of the Camry as well. Problems with the rear seat started decreasing the whole plants throughput which resulted in delays and more costs for the plant.
This case introduced three main concepts:
1. Just in Time/Toyota Production System
2. Root cause analysis (the five whys)
3. The link between production control and quality control
Toyota Production System
The Toyota Production System (TPS) is basically a pull system, driven by the needs of the following lines. It contrasts conventional push systems, which were driven by the output of preceding lines. This is mainly done through the kanban system (conveying information in and between processes on instruction cards). TPS operated to fix two problems: actual production always deviates from planned production, and unpredictable problems will always show up on the shop floor.
It started out as an ...