System Reliability
Toyota has seen an immense takeover of the global market share relating to car manufacturing and sales. The trend has been spearheaded by the company’s use of lean manufacturing through the Toyota Production System (TPS). According to Soliman (2017), TPS’s incorporation has managed to mitigate waste from processes that drag productivity and profitability behind. The company has thrived on leading the car manufacturing marketplace due to quality assurance. Nevertheless, system reliability remains a challenge in most companies, including Toyota Production. Over the past years, several reports have emerged over quality issues with some of the company’s models. For instance, Gwizdak & McRae (2012) highlight several complacencies with the company’s decision-making process, quality problems, and cost reduction pressures that disrupted the supply chain management process.
While the company made significant strides in opening manufacturing plants in different parts of the world, the top-down decision-making process became a challenge. It was no longer reliable as most managers were not on the ground to assess and evaluate the impact their decisions had on the overall process. As such, the company’s philosophy did not apply due to many management levels not being at par with what was happening across their factories. Improving the top-down decision-making process requires managers to rely on input from the local people on the ground before making critical decisions. Moreover, bridging the lean gap between managers and employees is vital to resolving the underlying issues present at the company. Managing these improvements requires identifying, resolving, and preventing similar occurrences (Banduka et al., 2016). More so, enhanced maintenance is necessary to streamline all the processes involving decision-making and management levels. Ultimately, continuous improvements will foster better performance and quality metrics.
References
Banduka, N., Veza, I., & Bilić, B. (2016). An integrated lean approach to process failure mode and effect analysis (PFMEA): A case study from automotive industry. Advances in Production Engineering And Management. DOI: 10.14743/apem2016.4.233
Gwizdak, S., & McRae, D. (2012). What went wrong at Toyota? IndustryWeek. https://www.industryweek.com/leadership/companies-executives/article/21958351/what-went-wrong-at-toyota
Soliman, M. (2017). A comprehensive review of manufacturing wastes: Toyota production system lean principles. Emirates Journal for Engineering Research, 22(2), 1-10. DOI: 10.6084/M9.FIGSHARE.9121283