Toyota Motor Manufacturing
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1. Where, if at all, does the current routing for handling defective seats deviate from the principles of the Toyota Production System?
2. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of stopping the line in case of a defect chair. (Make sure to include a numerical analysis to address the cost-issue of stopping the line.)
Whenever any problem is faced e.g. a defect chair, or whenever a team member is behind at a work station and therefore is unable to complete the task within the cycle time the Andon procedure is involved. Toyota Motor Manufacturing (TMM) uses this procedure in order to ensure quality of their products.
Desired situation:
In case one of the team members pulls the Andon rope, the board hanging above the production aisle will lighten up, the team leader will be directly alerted and the line will stop in case of a defect chair. This line stop could be temporary or not and could be starved (body short), blocked (body full) or stopped by internal problems. In case the team leader can correct the problem right away the assembly line is resumed by pulling the Andon cord again. So, in the best-case-scenario the defect chair would be corrected on the production line directly.
Every station within the assembly line uses jidoka tools which contribute to making production problems self-evident and stop directly when a problem is detected in order to build in quality and add value in the production process of chairs.
However, when stopping the assembly line fully this will increase the flow time of the car assembly as well as the flow rate of the entire production.
In order to determine the costs of stopping the line for either one minute or one hour in case of a defect chair we need to take into account that all employees are affected per shift. (Calculated in normal working time, no...