Tuesday was Toyota day. Destination: Toyotas Tsutsumi plant in Toyota City just outside of Nagoya.

To get there we had to take the Shinkansen from Tokyo Station. Seeing  the  Shinkansen 700 series silverarrow slide into the station, be seated in the comfortable compartment and drive silently towards Nagoya with a speed of more than 300 km/t was an adventure in itself.

In the factory, we were guided through one of the assembly lines, and the automated welding process.  At the plant Toyota produces Camry,  Premio,  Allion, Prius, Wish and Scion tC.

These models are produced on two lines, in a mixed production each car on the line is a  different model and color from the previous one. Only that way Toyota can remove the waste of overproduction by not  producing cars, that has not yet been ordered.

The first operation we saw was the door assembly. Toyota uses door-less assembly where doors after painting the doors are removed from the body and they each follow their own route to later be united again in final assembly. The advantage of this is easier access to the inner parts of the car, and less damage to the doors.

The best analogy to what we saw is a ballet. Workers did their work with a choreographed set of movements, designed to be the minimal effort to do the work and ensure good ergonomic.  Nobody was running and nobody worked ahead of the line.  The spirit of Taiichi Ohno was strong and alive.

Surely the work of producing a lot of completely similar things can never be as varied as other kinds of work in the modern world. However our whole standard of living is based on the society’s ability to produce low-cost, high quality items. And Toyota is able to transform this into a system that protects the individual and gives everybody challenges,  by having everybody involved in improvement efforts – Kaizen.

We also saw several examples of Andon pulls and stop the line philosophy.  Here it was clear that while the Stop The Line philosophy is what creates quality and is making sure systemic problems is eliminated quickly; it is also the lubrication that keeps the line running smooth.  Most of the Andon pulls was just small problems, that was solved immediately by having the supervisor help getting things back on track.

Further into the factory we saw the supply lines to the door assembly. A clever worked out system allowed a worker to create “kits” for each set of doors coming along the line.  By having models be mixed on the individual level (I do not know if any other manufacturer does this?), a need for standardizing is also created.  Assembly will be easier, when the parts are the same in more models.

Finally in the end of the line new cars flowed into to final verification:  a Blue Prius followed by a Green Camry, Followed by a Scion. Impressive.

 

 

 

 

(we were not allowed to take photos - the picture about is a official photo from the plant)

We sometimes hear Lean be accused of being just a new cost savings philosophy.  Yet another clever trick from management! But Toyota shows it is possible to create a challenging, respectful workplace in what is normally considered the most de-humanized kind of work (think of Chaplins “Modern Times”) . So why shouldn’t we be able to do that to in other areas, It should be easier,  not more difficult to apply lean to healthcare, service,  and Software Development by the way.

(Some of the participants in the Toyota Museum)

By Bent Jensen