Executive Summary
The production of the new Camry model has introduced new challenges in the Toyota's Georgetown Plan such as higher labour costs, lost production due to below than projected utilization rates, growing number of inventory in the line, less output per hour, and problems to meet sales agreements at distributions channels. Even though the problem has been attributed to the seat, the management does not know where the source is. Given that at looking to meet the short-term demand production targets the management has deviated from its TPS philosophy, Toyota has lost the trace of the problem and now has the challenge to address it in order to revert this trend. After a throughout analysis, we found out the following aspects could have had a different degree of impact in today's outcome. The seat types were increased from 12 to 84 with a very short period of accommodation time for the supplier. A higher number of Andon Pulls were found in the second shift. Part of the seat quality problems have also been found in months preceding the new launch. As a resulted we concluded that Management should eliminate the recent deviations from the TPS system and enforce its application thought extensive coaching in order to identify the source of the problem. Several actions should be taken at three levels (Assembling, overflow, and KFS). Due to the reports provided by different areas of the plant, it is likely that the seat problem has many sources that have been aggregated in the end. The following report outlines the problem statement, a short analysis, a list of the proposed solution and recommendations for the management team.
Problem Statement
There have been several signs of problems throughout the assembling line primarily associated with the seat. The ...