Lean production is a manufacturing philosophy which takes a methodical and systematic approach to provide constantly increasing value to the consumer through immersive employee involvement aimed towards delivering incremental improvement (kaizen) consistently over time (Toyota production system, n.d). Lean production is credited to Toyota, a Japanese car manufacturer which developed the system from the management philosophy from famed quality management icon, W. Edwards Deming, and the production techniques of Henry Ford, among others into what is officially called the Toyota Production System (TPS) – later to be known as the generic lean production. The TPS has been adopted across the automobile industry and is what raised Toyota to form a struggling automobile manufacturer in the 1980s to the largest car company at present. The below discussion will discuss the Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA) which Toyota touts as a revolutionary improvement on the TPS (Sobek II, Ward, and Liker, 1999; Toyota production system, n.d).
For an idea to be revolutionary, it must change the fundamentals of that which it seeks to change. To decide whether TNGA is revolutionary or not, a good look must be taken at the precursor, TPS system to determine if TNGN makes fundamental changes to TPS
Toyota Production System (TPS): TPS stands on two pillars: “jidoka” and “just-in-time” - JIT. According to its own website, jidoka can be defined as “automation with a human touch.” In this system, the automation detects a problem and communicates it to the human monitor. Because the situation deviates from the normal workflow, the line is stopped and the manager or supervisor removes or solves a problem. The resulting improvement is incorporated into the standard workflow leading to continuous improvement (kaizen) (Jidoka — Manufacturing high-quality products, n.d). JIT refers to a system that delivers exactly what is needed when it is needed and in the needed quantity and thus aims at eliminating waste to achieve the lowest possible cost while delivering quality with the shortest possible lead times (Toyota production system, n.d).
Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA): TNGA is supposed to deal with standardizing the numerous Toyota platforms and powertrains. Powertrains refer to the part of an automobile that generates power and delivers it to the moving parts. It consists of the engine, transmission and the drive shafts connected to the wheels by gears. As at March 2015, Toyota had 800 of these. A platform consists of powertrain and other additives and refers to a shared set of engineering and designs that characterize outwardly distinct models of a car brand. Toyota had 100 of these platforms and sub-platforms as of March 2015. The goal of TNGA is to narrow down the number of powertrains and platforms so they can be easily focused on continuous improvement (N.A., 2015).
From the above explanations, one gets the sense that TPS is a system aimed at continuous improvement of the general automation of car manufacturing based on a large number of 800 powertrains and 100 platforms over time while TNGA goes straight to the fundamental building blocks (the powertrains and platforms) to cut down their numbers, standardize them so incremental continuous improvement can be made more easily. In so far as TNGA is dealing with the fundamentals, it is revolutionary in theory. The execution is another matter.
According to Knowles (2011, p.19), the main problems with traditional quality management systems are the lack of systems thinking, lack of leadership, short-term focus, cost-quality trade-offs and lack of customer focus. All these are symptoms of one problem: leadership’s obsession with short-term quarterly profit reporting. When a company goes public, there is the tendency for management to choose short-term earnings (through cost-cutting measures, for example) which reflect in stable or increased stock prices over long-term earnings which could result from sacrificing these short-term earnings in a bid to adopt a systems thinking that could improve quality and lead to even larger profits in the long term.
Toyota put a freeze on the building of new production plants to develop and incorporate the TNGA into subsequent new plants so that by 2020 half its cars would be using its new standardized platforms. To go with these new technologies have been developed to make it easier for production designs to become a reality. This was expected to cost Toyota a large capital investment but will, in the long run, was expected to reduce resource expenditure by 20% or more. For the customer, implementation of the TNGA resulting in the sharing of parts and powertrain component would mean easy access to cheaper and standardized spare parts, easier and more harmonized servicing, simplification of use and better driver experience, hence (N.A., 2015; “Making Ever-Better…”, 2015).
A very dynamic and efficient quality management system must be lean enough to foster agility. In this regard, the Pareto (80/20) rule would be a good fit. TNGA would be implemented such that lean production is employed in the engineering of platforms and powertrains which are the more predictable and standardized car parts that can be produced in large volumes for different car models over a long time. This would afford Toyota the chance to design the other remaining parts around its platforms and give it the necessary agility to produce different models or marques. The key changes that could occur from this kind of approach would be flexibility in the number of iterations that can be made to its various standardized components while maintaining a good level of predictability. This standardization also affords Toyota the chance to scale up production easily and respond to changing automobile demands with speed (James, 2011, p.31).
CONCLUSION
The Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA) is a sensible idea because it provides the chance for numerous iterations of standardized production while maintaining a fair level of predictability (necessary for brand recognition) in a market place where customer demands are unpredictable and need to be met with speed.
REFERENCES
James, T. (2011). Operations Strategy. Bookboon. p.31.
Jidoka — Manufacturing high-quality products (n.d). Toyota Retrieved form:https://www.toyota-global.com/company/vision_philosophy/toyota_production_system/jidoka.html
Knowles, G. (2011). Quality Management. Bookboon. p.19.
Making Ever-Better Cars: Toyota’s Progress Report (2015, March 26). Toyota Retrieved from https://blog.toyota.co.uk/making-ever-better-cars-toyotas-progress-report
N.A. (2015). TNGA explained: engineering for the future. Official Blog of Toyota GB. Retrieved from: http://blog.toyota.co.uk/tnga-explained-engineering-for-the-future
Sobek II, D. K., Ward, A. C. and Liker, J. K. (1999, January 15).Toyota's Principles of Set-Based Concurrent Engineering. MIT Sloan Management Review Retrieved from https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/toyotas-principles-of-setbased-concurrent-engineering/
Toyota production system (n.d) Lean Enterprise Institute Retrieved from https://www.lean.org/lexicon/toyota-production-system
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