My first landing in Japan: Visit to Toyota

Our college arranged a visit to Toyota manufacturing plant in Toyota city on 30^th May, 2016. We had to report in college at 8.45 AM, and as always everyone came on time, and we started from college at 9 AM.

It was a lovely cloudy day, neither too hot nor too cold. We enjoyed the scenic beauty, greenery and cleanliness of Japan till we took a halt at Kariya Parking area at 10.30 AM. It was a big Parking area with some shopping stores and food court.

After finishing our lunch we start for Toyota city again at 12.15 PM and reached Toyota city at 1 PM. We were welcomed in the Toyota Motomachi ( Toyota Motocorp) by our guide for Toyota, her name is Mari. She told us about Toyota Motomachi plant which is constructed in 1,600,000 m² area, which is even more than 35 baseball court, and Annual production of this plant is 90,000 units (as of 2015).

There are 11 Toyota manufacturing plants in Japan , out of which Toyota motomachi is the second biggest plant after Tahara plant.

We also got to know about eco-car concept in Toyota. Eco cars as they say is the product of eco plats and eco people. In this they use installation of natural gas co-generation system, reusing waste water and waste heat etc.

There are 4 major production process in a Toyota.

1. Stamping – Which involves cutting of metal and giving it a shape of car parts, like outer body of car.

2. Welding Shop – Where various car parts are welded together.

3. Painting shop – where painting on welded car is done. On each car they apply 4 layers of coating.

4. Assembling shop : Where all the parts are assembled and final product is made.

Toyota follows just in time approach- making what is needed, when it is needed in the amount needed. Tracking is maintained for all the parts and parts are ordered from the supplier when it will be actually needed. They use Kanban approach for effectiveness.

Toyota plant is fully equipped with technology and robots. In the first assembly line we saw Door less system where doors of the cars are removed , so that workers can get direct access to the interior parts without struggling. Then the question arises, if they had to remove it later , why they keep it before, they should have kept it separately. But Mari told that they are fixed earlier so that painting should be uniform, so all exterior parts are assembled first and after painting, they take doors out and send it to separate line for doors which is called Sub-line for the door.

Toyota assembly line is a mixed production line, where different models are manufactured simultaneously. To make it efficient Toyota uses digital picking system, in which each car contains a tracking code, and system automatic detects which parts are needed for this car, and the parts automatically arrives at the assembly line.

In assembly line 3, windshield installation is done, which is done very carefully with the help of robots, and 100 kg of force is applied on it to fix it.

Last stage of assembly line is Inspection, which is done in following phases :

1. Visual inspection.

2. Steering angle inspection

3. Head lamp adjustment

4. Driving performance testing

5. Braking inspection

6. Chassis inspection – To check whether all the parts are tightly screwed or not.

7. Engine compartment checks.

Unlike other manufacturing plants, Toyota doesn’t work 24*7. Saturday’s and Sunday’s plants remain closed for inspection of robots and machine. In the weekdays Toyota works in 2 shifts, first one from 6.25 AM to 3.15 PM and second is from 4.10 PM to 1 AM.

Toyota believes in healthy work environment. Workers are given 4 breaks during a shift, in which 1 break is bigger for lunch(45 minutes) and other 3 breaks are smaller breaks for 10 minutes each. During the breaks production line stops completely. It takes 20 hrs to complete 1 car completely.

Cameras were not allowed in Toyota assembly line, I wish I could have taken some picture and shared with my wonderful experience.

Next we went to Toyota Museum, where we were allowed to use our phones and cameras. We saw different models of Toyota and also saw a short film on Toyota assembly line.