Toyota's Lean Processes: A Case Study

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Toyota's Lean Manufacturing and Product Development Processes

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This report will contain a brief discussion about the Toyota multinational automotive manufacturing company that what process design they are currently using for the manufacturing of their new cars. How the 4 Vs model is linked or aligned with their process design will be discussed. With the help of the flow chart, the operational process of the Toyota Company will be defined. The importance of the implementation of the Lean principles and Just-in-Time manufacturing system for the Toyota Company will be defined and how it will help the company in the achieving best and more efficient and flexible process design for them will be defined with the help of the 5 performance model which will describe its achievement in the company and how it is used in the company through the help of the Lean and Just-in-Time systems will be defined.

Current Process Design of the Toyota and the 4 Vs model

The process design of the Toyota go through the 5 steps which they follow for the manufacturing of their cars and this is the Concept making, Idea Development, Colour Development, Mock-up, Decision Hall and after all these steps are linked with the 4 Vs models which are the Variety, Volume, Visibility, and Variation.

Concept Design- Toyota company first build up the concept design of their new car or new design for their old variant in which they want to do any variation in it. As in this step, they find out the new ideas and the thoughts by properly researching the market that what new trend is going in the market and what their target market group wants in their new car and also analyzing their competitors that how they are thinking and what they launch or planning to launch in the market. By properly analyzing this they made up their new concept of the car by making the sketches of their new car designs and through this, they have a visual review of their decided concept which helps them in taking them to their next process design step (Morgan & Liker, 2020).
Idea development- As in the early stage they make the designs through pencil and pastels and this stage the company digital modelers take that sketches into the virtual space through dimensional as with the help of this they will be able to develop their idea of the new car with new features in a good possible way that transferring their thoughts into the reality of the buildable approach. In this stage what new variations which they want to make in their new car they also decide in this and what visibility of their product can be. As the visibility of their product is very less to their customer as all their product is made directly in the factory where the customer doesn't access it. They decide the number of varieties they have to make in this.
Colour development- This process design step includes the decision making of the Toyota company that what new colors they will introduce in their cars and what best color will suit their this new model of the car in the market. This is a very critical process in the design process of the company as color plays a very important role in attracting the customers for their product as to how much which color will suit their car. The Toyota company focuses more on the research about the interior and fashion design of their car and coordinate varieties of the color on their car and all the other parts of the cars and deciding which suits the best to it. They bring a variety of models in it as they bring out a variety of color designs of their cars according to the needs and wants of their customer's demand in the current market (Martins & Enes, 2020).
Mock-up – In this process design, the Toyota company make a three-dimensional mode of their car in the clay model form which helps the designer to understand perfectly the proportions and shapes of the car new model in the physical form so that they can find out if there any issues there and in this, they will also decide the number of varieties they want to launch in this car.
Decision Hall- This is the final step in the design process of the Toyota Company as the new car is already they have seen in the artificial format and now they have to decide for the final car making from viewing their customer thoughts for it. They have a large penthouse in which they have special lighting which allows them in testing their model in different conditions. In this stage after deciding the manufacturing of the car, they also decide how much volume they have to make for this new car by properly analyzing the demand in the market as the decision of volume is very important for the Toyota Company to decide to make in first.

As all the process design steps are directly linked with the 4 Vs model as in every step of the process design they make the decisions with taking how much volume, how many varieties, how it is visible, and what variations they have to make in their new car all this help the Toyota Company to build perfectly (Katic et al, 2019).

Operational Process of the Toyota Company through flow chart:

From the above flow the operational process of the Toyota Company can be easily seen and understand as it goes through various steps or procedures which are:

Product Order- First the order of the product of the Toyota company car comes from their own Toyota dealers that which model of their company is more in demand and which model is in shortage and according to that they give order to the Toyota Company.
Production Plan- In this step of the operational process the company manufacturing unit will plan their production as which model they have to produce first and how much quantity they have to produce so that they can meet their sudden demands of the products and in this, they also decide how much raw materials they have with them and how much they have to plan to purchase more and in how much time they have to complete their production process. The production plan is a very important stage as here the operational manager has to make a proper plan so that there will be no delay and wastage of the time and materials will be there.
Heijunka sequence Plan- In this process, the Toyota Company operation manager will schedule their tools for the completion of the work as they have to make many cars and many models so they will schedule the use of the tools in the operation so that they can complete their products on time to meet the customer average demand for their Toyota Cars. The scheduling is important so that they can prioritize the important and necessary tasks first to achieve the good flow of the various activities of the operation of the company (Alshehri, 2016).
Body Processing- In this operational process the company will make the body of their cars of different models, this includes in the production of the car as here they make the outer body structure of the car.
Painting- In this process the Toyota plans for the painting of their car body according to the needs and demands of their customer and the market. This process also takes time as in this the whole combination of color is matched with the car.
Assembly- In this, the company assembles all the parts and components of the car with the body of the car this is the step where the actual car gets ready which means the finished good or product of the company. In this, all the necessary parts and according to the need of the car will be assembled. In this, they will test the quality of their car that meets the requirements of safety or not.
Warehousing and Line-off – In this process, the Toyota Company keeps the finished cars in the warehouse and then lines off to the dealer according to their demand through a different way of transporting their vehicles to the dealers directly.
Reached to the Toyota dealer- In this step, the car reached the various dealers who placed the order for the car according to their demands. After this, they sell the cars of Toyota according to the needs and demands of their customer.
Customer the final stage- This is the final stage of the operational process of the Toyota Company in which the product will be reached to their final customer who gives the order to buy the cars of the Toyota and here the operation process of the company ends as the product is finally consumed by the final customer (García, 2018).

Lean Principles and Just-in-Time Manufacturing implementation using 5 performance models:

With the successful implementation of the Lean Principles manufacturing the Toyota Company will be able to eliminate all those processes and material from the production process will help them to only add those values in the product which give the values to their end customer and not adding all those things which do not add value to their end customers, as this will be wasteful for the company and this will also help the Toyota company to build more flexibility in their work and increase their efficiency in their process design as they only focus on those things which are needed and wanted by their end customer. This will also help them in creating a quality product for the Toyota Company (Bevilacqua et al,2017).
Cost of the product also plays an important role for the Toyota company as with the help of Lean manufacturing the company will be able to reduce their overall cost of the product as by this they will be able to reduce the unnecessary processes and material from the production of the cars as they will focus only on what the customer wants and by this, they will be able to manufacture managed effectively to produce only high quality of the cars at the very affordable and reasonable price for the customers.
Lean manufacturing also helps the Toyota Company in improving the quality of their products as when they will focus on the details and features of the product which their customer wants and what the market demands then they will be able to produce the high level and high quality of the products cars for their customers. As through the implementation of the Lean principles in the operation of Toyota, they will be able to focus on the quality details of their cars models and the features of the cars with the using the best quality of the raw materials for their cars than by this they will be able to improve their quality of the product (Östlund, 2020).
Speed of the production line of the Toyota company will be improved with the help of the Lean manufacturing as by this they will be able to balance their production speed for the improvement of their actual speed by this they will be able to improve their production of the various models of the Toyota cars and this will help them to meet the demands of their customer on time. As in this, they will be able to rearrange the flow and layout of the company production line which help them in the increasing the production level of the company and this will help them increase their speed and reduce their overall cost of the production and this result in the more efficient and flexibility of their process design as they will be able to manage the things more properly in their production of the cars (Ledbetter, 2018).
The dependability of the Toyota Company in their manufacturing is related to the timely delivery of the products to the customer when they raise the demand for their product. With the help of the Just-in-Time manufacturing system in the company will help them to meet their demands of the products on time and give the delivery of the spare parts and the products to their customer at the time of their demand which helps them to be more reliable and this also help them to reduce the overall cost of the production as here the wastage of the raw material and other things of the production. Here the manufacturing is taking place only when there will be any demand for their product which saves their overhead costs of the production per unit. As they reduce the holding cost of the outputs and inputs of the company (Jiang et al, 2016).
With the help of the Just-in-Time manufacturing system, they can become more flexible in their operation and their production of the different model's cars in the short period with having small batches of all the models of the Toyota Company cars at the time of their need in the market. This flexibility helps them to save their time and save their extra money which they have to incur due to the early production of their cars model in advance and which they have to store in the warehouses also to wait for the customers to raise their demands and then deliver it but now they don't follow this but use only the current demand of the market and according to that, they produce.
The Just-in-Time also help the Toyota Company in reducing their overall cost and improving the quality of their product as they only made when the demand raises so due to which they have very less inventory with them due to which they have to store less and the wastage of the things also reduced and this helps them to reduce their overall cost of holding and storing of the goods in the warehouses, this makes their process design more efficient and flexible also (Htun et al, 2019).
The Just-in-Time will help the company in increasing their profit as when they will invest the small level of the amount at the production level due to the manufacturing of the products only at the time of need then they will be able to save their so many extra cost of the production of the product and due to which they will be able to increase their profit as now less wastage of the things will be happening in the company then they will be able to save more money and will be able to make more money which in turn will help them in having more profit for their company.
The speed of the production of the Toyota Company will be improved and the efficiency of their process also increase due to the increase in the production as when they will produce only at the time of the demand of the product, then it will increase their speed of production and delivery of their product on time to their customer. The better the quality the better they will be able to capture the market of their business in a good period (Al-Shboul, 2017).
Through the implementation of this manufacturing system in the Toyota Company they will be able to become more flexible in their production and delivery of their product on time and when needed due to which they are also able to try to innovate and add new more features in their products so that they can easily retain and manage their old customers and also able to capture a good market share for their company. When the process design will develop the new idea related to the new trends in the market then they will be able to only focus on the needs of their targeted customer and then their work becomes more efficient and flexible. As due to this they will be able to provide and produce a wide range of cars in the market (Ferrer & Santa, 2017).
Every company wants to improve their profit and reduce their cost and increase their speed and profit for their business and with the implementation of this system in the company then the Toyota will be able to meet their customer demands more perfectly and will be able to sustain in the market as when they will do good research and made their product only according what their customer needs and eliminating all unnecessary things from it and manufacturing it only at the time of their needs then it will directly improve and increase the efficiency and flexibility of their process design team, as they will have enough time for their variations in their product and improving their overall quality and experience of their product for their customers. By this, they will be able to face their competition and will be able to increase their overall speed and quality of the product and increase the flexibility in their company (Korytkowski, 2017).

Conclusion

From the above report, it can be concluded that the process design of the Toyota Company is more effective and good as with the help of that they can go through five stages and able to properly design their concept and develop a good idea for their product and then properly analysis its durability and success in the real world. The flow chart of the operational process of the company shows that they first take the order from the dealers and then plan their production and then they manufacture it and delivers it to their dealers and then the dealers send it to their end customers. The Lean principles and Just-in-Time will play a very important role in the company if they implement it in their operation as with the help of this they will be able to reduce their wastage of the material and save the cost and improve the quality of the product and increase the speed of their production and have more flexibility in their operation.

References

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