Source: http://wemakeitsafer.com/vehicle-recall/Toyota-Camry-Recall-7123626
Toyota Motor Corp., one of the forerunners for lean manufacturing and a innovator in industrial engineering techniques, has been the benchmark for automobile manufacturers for a long time. But now the best-selling car maker in the world is looking to Volkawagen AG for a crazy new idea: modular manufacturing.
Modular manufacturing is a manufacturing process that shares components across different products, slashing production costs greatly. A large portion of Toyota's cars in the future will share many identical or similar components, making it easier to produce a variety of vehicles in the same facility. The old way of automobile manufacturing used to be one facility, one line, one vehicle model, but under this new process of modular manufacturing it will allow Toyota to produce a variety of models with flexibility and ease all on one line in one facility.
It can easily be seen how this process could reduce manufacturing costs. With the smaller manufacturing lines that the modular process allows, initial plant investment costs are expected to significantly decrease, up to 40% according to Toyota. With the implementation of similar components across a variety of models, plants will be able to order parts in bulk and cut costs with a greater scale of economics. Consumers should be able to expect to see these savings on their end of the bargain as well.
Toyota has been seen as the gold standard for automobile manufacturing for the past few decades in terms of its production system. They've introduced many industrial and manufacturing engineering concepts, such as "continuous improvement" and "just-in-time inventory," which I actually discussed a little in my first blog post. Most importantly, Toyota has been know for their extremely high standard that they hold themselves to in quality control. One of the concerns that arises with this modular manufacturing process is that quality control could suffer significantly. When you have many models of cars that share similar components, you will find systemic issues that will show up across the board with your brand, which will raise the number of recalls you have to perform and will raise your quality control costs greatly. Also, with the greater variety and flexibility that will be present in the manufacturing lines, inspection and tests will be more difficult to conduct or will not be as effective as in the previous process. With a focused line that only produced one model all the time, Toyota knew exactly what to look for at want point in the process to make sure their quality was top notch; with the modular method, that's going to be more difficult.
This is an exciting path that the largest automobile manufacturing firm is choosing to take, for better or worse. Toyota has been the manufacturer to watch and learn from for a long time, so it will be interesting to see how they handle this transition. While the modular manufacturing process will cut costs greatly for the producer and consumer, it may increase the number of defects and recalls that will occur as well. We'll just see where this road takes us.
Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/toyota-unveils-revamped-manufacturing-process-1427371432
This was a really well thought out and written article. All the talk of lean manufacturing and continuous improvement brings me back to my time spent as an intern for a large engineering company. When learning about CI and lean manufacturing, we actually talked a lot about Toyota and how (like you mentioned) they are essentially at the forefront of the whole manufacturing process as far as quality and efficiency goes.
ReplyDeleteThe whole idea behind modular manufacturing makes total sense. I mean, if you're producing the same types of things in the same place, why not make as many of the parts interchangeable as possible? The idea that the costs of the production will decrease the consumer purchase price if the demand stays the same is essentially economics 101, so it makes sense that a company would want to decrease production cost.
I do agree with you that there could be issues (as there always are) with the process, however. There would have to be an increase in mistake-proofing involved with the fasteners and what not in order to maintain the same quality that Toyota has put out through the years. However, I do also think that in general, from my experience in manufacturing sites, most of the parts for a product have to go through multiple stages of error proofing just to get moved on to the next step (brackets that only fit a part a certain way, etc.), so I do not think tests for the product would be impacted.
A reputable company such as Toyota, having always been the forerunners of the manufacturing world, rightly stakes claim to another spectacular manufacturing idea in modular manufacturing. Again, great article!
Thank you! It does make sense to move towards modular manufacturing when you are producing such a large volume of cars. I'm just worried that their whole lineup of vehicles will soon start to feel monotonous; like they were just copy-pasting. And there's the whole issue with recalls and lawsuits involved now. In the past the issue may have been isolated to one model, but now there's the possibility that a large portion of their most popular vehicles could have a serious issue with a shared module on the vehicles. Sounds like a legal nightmare. But if they handle it correctly, (which, I mean, we are talking about Toyota here) it could be a huge step forward for them and propel them that much further into the forefront.
ReplyDeleteThis blog was very informative and interesting. The new manufacturing process seems to be really revolutionary. I noticed that you said it would lower cost which was the best thing you could say to a broke college kid. I could definitely use a new car so i am glad that Toyota is trying to reduce cost and save both the manufacture and the consumer money. The modular manufacturing is something that is very new and cool in today's technology, i have played around with it for a while with parts on a bobcat and is defiantly beneficial to the construction and design process. This blog was very well thought out and i am glad that i read it, it was very informative and important to understand how the process works and what it is doing for me.
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