Page 74 - Toyota Under Fire

THE OIL CRISIS AND THE GREA T RECESSION

That’s far more powerful as a learning experience than anything
that Toyota could have done during the boom years.

Turning Downtime into Opportunity
As we mentioned earlier, one of the first reactions to the crash in
the sales of large vehicles was to shut down assembly lines dedi-
cated to those vehicles and to move the assembly of certain ve-
hicles to different plants to maximize the efficiency of plants
and people. Specifically, the Tundra plant in San Antonio, Texas
(TMMTX), and the assembly line at the plant in Princeton, Indi-
ana (TMMI), which produced Tundras as well as Sequoia SUVs,
were stopped for three months, from August to October 2008.
During that time, Tundra production was moved entirely to
TMMTX. Meanwhile, the construction of a new plant in Missis-
sippi expected to build the Highlander SUV was halted; instead,
TMMI would produce the Highlander once it could reconfigure
one of its assembly lines. The shutdown decision was made be-
fore the recession hit in full force; when it did, hopes for a quick
bounceback in volume were dashed. Sales of large vehicles made
in Indiana and Texas continued at only about half their prereces-
sion rates well into 2009.
These assembly-line shutdowns sound a lot like typical man-
ufacturing practices to deal with slow demand, except that the
Toyota team members on those assembly lines weren’t furloughed
or laid off. They continued to come to work each day, putting
in eight-hour shifts. Which leads to the question: what were all
these workers doing, and how could Toyota be working its way
back to profitability by continuing to pay idle workers?
Recall that one of the goals of the Emergency Profit Improve-
ment Committee was for all plants to be able to run profitably

43