case study
answer the last part from this question ,What would you recommend? Why?

2) As Doug Friesen, what would you do to address the seat problem? What options exist? Where would you focus your attention and solution efforts? What would you recommend? Why?
just the last part not the full questions ( What would you recommend? Why? )

Toyota Motor Manufacturing, U.S.A., Inc.
On the Friday before the running of the 118th Kentucky Derby, Doug Friesen, manager of
assembly for Toyota’s Georgetown, Kentucky, Plant, was approaching the final assembly lines, where
shiny Camrys took shape. He heard a cheer go up. Team members on the lines were waving their
hand tools towards a signboard that read “no overtime for the shift.” Smiling broadly, Friesen
agreed: everyone in the plant surely deserved a relaxed Derby weekend.
The plant had been hectic lately, as it was both supplying brisk sales of the all-new Camry
sedan and ramping up station wagon versions for the European as well as North American markets.
Overtime also had been necessary early in the week to make up lost production because the line
utilization rate was below the projected target. In addition to these immediate problems, a growing
number of cars were sitting off the line with defective seats or with no seats at all.
The seat problem had been the subject of an urgent meeting called by Mike DaPrile, general
manager of the assembly plant, that morning, May 1, 1992. At the meeting, Friesen learned of the
situation firsthand from key people in both the plant and the seat supplier. He then spent the
afternoon on the shop floor to learn more about the problem while the issues discussed were fresh in
his mind. By the end of the day, it became clear to Friesen that the seat problem needed solving once
and for all; the trouble was that trying to do so could hurt line utilization. This was not the first tough
question Toyota’s famous production system had encountered, nor would it be the last. But this seat
problem was especially delicate and undoubtedly would demand Friesen’s attention in the following
week.
Background
In the early 1980s, Japanese auto makers contemplated building cars in North America.
Japan’s huge trade imbalance had caused political pressure to mount, while the economic feasibility
of such investment had improved with a rapidly rising yen. At that time, however, it was unclear
whether cars produced outside Japan could live up to their hard-earned reputation of high quality at
low cost. This issue was far from settled in 1985 when Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) unveiled its
plan to open an $800 million greenfield plant in Kentucky. (See Exhibit 1.) Thus, the company’s
endeavor to transplant its unique production system to Bluegrass Country effectively became a live
experiment for the world to watch.
693-019 Toyota Motor Manufacturing, U.S.A., Inc.
2
In July 1988, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, U.S.A. (TMM) began volume production on a
1,300 acre site in Georgetown, near Lexington. The plant had an annual capacity of 200,000 Toyota
Camry sedans, which would replace the bulk of Japanese imports of the same model. In 1992, TMM
was expected to supply 240,000 of the all-new Camrys, whose sales were up by more than 20% since
the model change in fall 1991. The new Camry joined the ranks of midsize family sedans, which
constituted one-third of the total American car market and returned an average 17% pretax profit
margin1 on a sticker price averaging $18,500. For the first time, in March 1992, TMM started
producing wagon versions of the new Camry exclusively within Toyota’s worldwide plant network.
Toyota Production System2
Since its inception, Toyota had always striven for “better cars for more people.” This meant
producing cars meeting diverse customer preferences with flawless quality. It further meant
delivering cars at an affordable price with perfect timing. This ambitious goal had seemed nearly
elusive after the Second World War, since most people in Japan could not afford a car even at cost. In
addition, the country’s labor productivity was only one-eighth of that of the United States. In essence,
Toyota was challenged to cut cost dramatically, but without the scale economies that American firms
enjoyed. It needed an entirely new source of economies to satisfy customers with variety, quality,
and timeliness, all at a reasonable price. The Toyota Production System (TPS) evolved as Toyota’s
answer to this challenge, and served as a common frame of reference among all its employees.
TPS aimed at cost reduction by thoroughly eliminating waste, which, in production
environments tended to snowball unnoticeably. Waste of overproduction, for example, not only tied
up working capital in inventory, but it necessitated warehouse storage space, forklift trucks to move
goods about, material handlers to operate trucks, computers to keep track of inventory locations, a
staff to maintain the computerized system, and so on. Furthermore, overproduction often concealed
the location of the true bottleneck and thereby invited investment in the wrong equipment, resulting
in excess capacity.
Identifying what was waste in reality, however, was no simple matter. Thus, TPS provided
two guiding principles to facilitate this critical process. The first was the principle of Just-In-Time
(JIT) production: produce only what was needed, only how much was needed, and only when it was
needed. Any deviation from true production needs was condemned as waste. The second was the
principle of jidoka: make any production problems instantly self-evident and stop producing
whenever problems were detected. In other words, jidoka insisted on building in quality in the
production process and condemned any deviation from value-addition as waste. TPS defined
“needs” and “value” from the viewpoint of the next station down the line, that is, the immediate
customer.
These TPS principles reflected two assumptions about production environments. First, true
needs would deviate from a production plan unpredictably, no matter how meticulously that plan
was prepared: hence the virtue of JIT production. Second, problems would crop up constantly on the
shop floor, making deviations from planned operating conditions inevitable: hence the virtue of
jidoka. TPS, of course, encouraged continually improving the planning process, but it also strongly
emphasized alerting plant people to deviations from any plans about how production was to proceed.
To implement the TPS principles, Toyota employed a variety of tools, many described later in
this case. For JIT production, these tools were used to keep information flow as close to the physical

1Business Week (May 18, 1992) p. 50.
2The glossary at the end of the case supplements the explanation of Japanese and Toyota production concepts.
Toyota Motor Manufacturing, U.S.A., Inc. 693-019
3
flow of parts as possible. Parts were thus pulled from downstream based on actual usage, rather than
pushed from upstream based on a planned schedule remote from the shop floor. This arrangement
required upstream stations to be capable of changing over among parts with minimal setup time.
Hence, creating a flowing production process was a prerequisite for TPS.
The purposes of jidoka tools were to aid immediate problem detection and facilitate visual
control. For them to work properly, the normal state of operations had to be well characterized and
understood. Therefore, another prerequisite of TPS was standardizing the process and documenting
the standard plainly.
Finally, TPS depended on human infrastructure, symbolized by Toyota’s corporate slogan:
“Good Thinking, Good Products.” Plants practicing JIT and jidoka principles were extremely prone to
shutdowns, and would be paralyzed without people capable of solving exposed problems promptly,
completely, and systematically. Toyota thus instilled “good thinking” in all its employees through
senior management coaching and internal training programs. These efforts cultivated two strong
attitudes that permeated the organization: stick to the facts, and get down to the root cause of the
problem. A typical discussion of a problem would start with “let’s go see it” and then converge on
the “Five Whys” exercise. This exercise consisted of asking a chain of “why” questions until the root
cause was identified and countermeasures determined (see Exhibit 2).
Methodical thinking extended beyond solving problems after the fact. It enabled people to
seek kaizen: change for the better. At Toyota, as soon as anyone established a standard way of doing a
job, that person set out to demolish it proactively, to install an even better way. Kaizen was
indispensable in pursuing TPS goals continuously and indefinitely.
The Georgetown Ramp Up
Developing human infrastructure was TMC’s foremost priority in transplanting TPS to
Georgetown, as evidenced by several decisions made early on. First, TMC assigned to TMM the 1987
Camry that was already being mass-produced in its Tsutsumi plant in Japan. Second, it replicated the
Tsutsumi line as closely as possible at TMM. And third, it set a deliberately slow ramp up schedule.
As a result, TMC could find people in Tsutsumi who, based on their own experience, were able to
demonstrate to TMM how to solve the problems encountered in that plant.
While construction was underway at Georgetown in early 1986, TMM initiated a hiring and
training program (run out of a trailer office). It began with top managers and proceeded to core
operations personnel; these people primarily came from within the industry and formed the nucleus
of TMM operations. Their first encounter with TPS occurred during a month-long trip to Tsutsumi, to
which Doug Friesen’s reaction was quite typical:
I built cars at Tsutsumi, and couldn’t believe 60% of what I saw there. The
line was unbelievably fast-paced, the plant was kind of run down, and the American
company I left had more automation. The good things I saw were just common sense
and no big deal at all. My eyes weren’t open back then.
Next, TMC sent Tsutsumi people to Georgetown, hundreds of them in all. These trainers-onloan
coached TMM supervisory personnel one-on-one and reinforced TPS basics. Every TMM
manager was also paired with a coordinator from TMC, who remained in Kentucky for a few years.
These coordinators were charged to develop their counterparts only by persuasionCnot to do things
themselves. This intensely personal approach brought an “eye-opening” moment to most TMM
people. As TMC’s plan unfolded in front of them, they could witness actions in the context around
them, appreciate unexpectedly positive results, and have their coaches make sense of what lay behind
these results. Although everyone had a unique episode that marked a turning point, they converged
693-019 Toyota Motor Manufacturing, U.S.A., Inc.
4
on one point: “TPS isolates problems from people and thereby enables people to focus on solving
problems.”
Fujio Cho, president of TMM and TPS evangelist, described his vision:
We fortunately have not seen any surprises so far. I believe in the
universality of TPS and its ability to deliver high quality. To develop TMM, we put
safety above all else and began with quality. We then added productivity to our
target. Right now, our cars are as good as Tsutsumi’s in quality and we are only
slightly behind in productivity. We are currently moving to the next stepCworrying
about cost and spreading TPS to local suppliers. I am hopeful that we can make
TMM a truly American company that contributes to the community.
In early 1992, Georgetown’s huge complex employed over 4,000 people, representing $150 million in
annual payroll. In the plant’s backyard, construction was underway to double TMM’s capacity.
Operations
In Georgetown, the power train plant supplied engines and axles to the assembly plant,
which performed sheet-metal stamping, plastic molding, body welding, painting, and assembly
operations. In these direct operations as well as in their support functions (see Exhibit 3), TPS was
deployed as a set of management tools to be practiced daily. Mike DaPrile commented:
TPS highlights problems so that people can see them easily. The hard part is
teaching it so that people practice it because they want to, rather than because they
have to. To teach it well, you have to get to know people very deeply and over time.
In the process, we all become students here. In fact, I have learned more in the last
five years than I did in the 25 years I spent with another auto company.
Assembly
Assembly operations were performed along 353 stations on a conveyor line, over five miles in
length and consisting of several connected line segments: the trim lines, chassis lines, and final
assembly lines. Adjacent line segments were decoupled by a few cars, and the entire assembly line
was buffered from the power train plant and the paint line with about half an hour’s production. The
line currently operated on a line cycle time of 57 seconds, down from 60 at the startup.
Assembly and part handling required 769 team members, who were paid an average of $17
an hour (not including benefits), plus a 50% premium for overtime. A team usually had four
members and one team leader, who received a premium of 5% to 8%. To supervise these team
leaders and team members in two shifts, Doug Friesen worked closely with 10 assistant managers and
46 group leaders (see Exhibit 3). A regular shift lasted 525 minutes, including 45 minutes of unpaid
lunch time and two paid 15-minute breaks. When a team member had to leave the moving line, the
team leader filled in that position as a line rover.
Every station on the assembly line embodied jidoka and kaizen tools. A standardized work
chart was posted adjacent to each work station on the line, showing the cycle time of that station, the
sequence of work tasks, and the timing to perform them within one cycle. Colored tape marked out
areas of the floor to specify where just about everything in sight belonged, and promoted the “4Ss
(sift, sort, sweep, spic-and-span

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