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Toyota Motor Corporation Lean Operations Essay
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Toyota’s JIT (just in time) manufacturing system keeps inventory at a minimum and is committed to avoiding overproduction. Only what is needed, when it is needed, is provided. “Overproduction may create excessive lead times, result in high storage costs and make it difficult to detect defects” (Harris, 2007, par.3). Whenever something is produced that is unneeded, that is a waste of both time and money. Waste also means the waste of storage space needed to keep inventory clean and in climate-controlled conditions. Waste also means that products which could have been valuable could have taken up the devoted time and money to the unneeded products instead.
But to operate a JIT system requires close relationships with suppliers. Suppliers must be trusted to be able to supply the raw materials in small quantities, as quickly as possible, when there is a spike in demand. A JIT system also requires highly trained workers. After all, another significant source of waste is product errors. Minimizing errors through enhanced employee expertise is another source of waste reduction. Employees also need to be highly skilled in JIT, to ensure that there are no delays or bottlenecks, given that the company is operating on a razor-thin margin of production, with no room for extraneous costs or items produced.
But just as employees must always be continually learning about their workplace and improving their skills, so must the organization as a whole. There must be a continual feedback loop. The workplace must continually learn about what practices work and what practices do not to maximize the value of the production process, and then institute new processes that emphasize the efficiencies and ideal conditions for people to do work. In theory, the more efficient the company becomes through such continual improvement and monitoring, the easier it becomes to enhance this efficacy over time.
Reference
Harris, L. (2007). Investing in our economy. Capacity Magazine. Retrieved from: http://www.rcbi.org/index.php/viewarticle/130-capacity-magazine/spring-2007/features/336-lean-manufacturing-made-toyota-the-success-story-it-is-todayinvesting-in-our-economy
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