Page 85 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

Additional teams were formed to continue to work on im-
proving the plant’s performance on takt changes. Now that it
was fully exposed to the most wildly fluctuating demand that the
United States had ever seen, the plant would have to make much
more frequent takt changes. In fact, during 2009 and 2010, the
plant made eight takt changes, more than in its entire prior his-
tory. As of the fall of 2010, TMMK had managed to improve its
takt change process enough to cut the time for changes from six
weeks to four weeks (that does not mean the line is shut down for
four weeks)—that means that, in the future, the plant will be able
to adjust its speed more frequently while reaching full production
sooner, and thus will be more profitable.
Such variability wasn’t just limited to TMMK. Recall that
TMMTX, the Tundra plant in San Antonio, Texas, was only two
years old when the recession hit—and thus had very little ex-
perience dealing with change. To make matters more complex,
TMMTX had a unique approach to supplier parts. Toyota’s just-
in-time system depends on long-term, tightly integrated relation-
ships with suppliers that deliver parts frequently throughout the
day. This system depends on the suppliers having plants near
the Toyota plant, which in Japan means within about a 30-
minute drive. TMMTX was built far from the supply base in the
Midwest of the United States, so Toyota took the unusual step
of locating suppliers on Toyota property, right next to the as-
sembly plant: two-thirds of all parts by bulk are produced on
site. That meant that all changes had to be closely coordinated
with the suppliers, who were also just learning TPS, because there
was literally nowhere for any extra inventory of parts to go. Four
of the twenty-one on-site parts suppliers were under the same
roof as the Toyota line, with just a few hundred yards separating
them.

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