Toyota Motor Manufacturing Case Analysis Management Case Study

Toyota Motor Manufacturing Case Analysis
Executive Summary
The seat problem at the TMM facility is multifactorial and needs prompt intervention first to address the problem and avoid jamming the assembly line and long-term problems to ensure the prevalence of the problem is reduced or eliminated. The problem seems to stem from the KFS factory and heightened by the lack of proper communication channels within TMM to report issues on the assembly line for action. The short-term proposed solutions; position control quality officer on the KFS factory to inspect and approve seat quality before shipping to reduce KFS special deliveries. Long-term interventions will need to find other seat suppliers to avoid overdependence on KFS, institute a problem reporting channel to the management for analysis and prompt action, create an in-house assembly line to have an end to end control over the quality of the seats.
Problem
There has been a seat problem that is slowing the assembly line efficiency. Some seats shipped by KFS are defective, and they have been affecting the productivity of the assembly line. Some of the workers on the assembly line seem to have ‘normalized’ the seat problem, and they are surprised that the manager is not aware of it. The problem started a few days ago and the adaptation the factory line adopted to ensure production target has allowed the problem to balloon and at the moment the run ratio is 85% a big drop from 95%. The reduced run ratio meant a shortfall of 45 cars per shift which had to be made up with overtime and that meant increased cost of production. The production line supervisors instead of stopping the production line to find the root problem instead focused on filling the overflow area to be addressed later and separately. It was a good decision, but the problem persisted, and they did not report for further intervention measures.
Analysis
The new model seat designs and styling could have been overwhelming for KFS to handle and they have been scrambling to meet supply needs and overlooking quality. KFS has to adapt and diversify their production line from serving TMC with three seat colors with five styles to match the new TMC Camry product variants and international market. The seat problem issue seemed to have cropped up when KFS had to supply seats with different variations to Europe, North America, Japan and Middle East which increased the product diversity and quantity they had to meet. The communication processes on the assembly line are not relaying problems on the problems on the line to the management for action because the employees at the overflow area seemed ‘puzzled’ that the manager did not know of the seat defects problems. This signified a lapse in communication process between the assembly line technical employees and the management. The temporary solutions offered by supervisors to ensure the assembly line keeps working are good, but they do not address the root problem. Thus, the problem is likely to persist and add to the production cost and delayed deliveries. Concisely, the issue at TMM can be traced back to KFS’s reliability in ensuring quality.
Solution
For the short-term, TMM can position a Quality control officer on the KFS production ...