Quote:
Originally Posted by switchlanez
According to the Toyota Production System (TPS) or lean manufacturing, car makers stock a couple weeks of parts at most and order more as needed. Hoarding 3 months of parts costs millions in overhead because of the real estate it occupies (bad practice by the Big Three in the '70s til they adopted Toyota's method). Just some things I remember as a TPS-certified manufacturing engineer co-op at a Toyota plant. Also, recent press releases still show production prototypes. They were pilot run through the assembly line with minor parts not yet finalized (missing wheel well/underbody linings, interior bits seem inconsistent in publications). Production can’t start til these minor nuisances are sorted out. With the prototype done, Toyota just about wrapped up its complete parts list; now its suppliers need a couple months lead time to prep for the big production run. It takes a lot longer to prep for manufacturing than to manufacture the car itself. When the redesigned Tacoma launched, production at the plant started under 2 months before its launch. Considering the Tacoma is a much higher volume vehicle than the 86, the 86 would require less lead time. It takes a couple days to fill the assembly line from start to end. Once the line was full we'd build out 1 car (Tacoma, Corolla, Vibe) per minute (24 hours a day, 5 days a week). This approximates to a hypothetical 3.5 week turnaround time for 20,000 FR-Ss.
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good lord engineers.
every business class talks about Toyota legendary production system. the point i was making without going into details and quoting books and internships is that like you've said "With the prototype done, Toyota just about wrapped up its complete parts list; now its suppliers need a couple months lead time to prep for the big production run." which is right now if production begins in March, the cars were seeing are called Q.T.S. cars. after all the test drives and road tests they will be re-evaluated for any needed changes before the first run.
Quote:
Originally Posted by switchlanez
I worked in the paint department; we definitely did NOT store paint in cans lol. Dealers around the world don’t need 6 months to order configurations (colors, transmissions, etc.). Thanks to TPS, Toyota receives needed parts overnight (usually same day) since suppliers tend to cluster around any given Toyota plant. Orders from the customer (the dealerships) are taken around a month in advance and parts are stocked at the factory 2 weeks before they're assembled in a complete car. This is why Toyota beat the Big Three; they responded to demand faster and better.
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never said they did (paint). why not bring up as to why toyota manufacturing chooses certain areas to build their plant and its correlation to its parts suppliers, which you brought up somewhat.
Quote:
Originally Posted by switchlanez
If production starts in late March, Scion has quite some time to figure out what configurations to order. They’d be stupid not to use the First 86 data to help with that, especially since configuration preference appeared on the First 86 order form. BTW since it was done online, the 8 hour 6 minute time window is actually 11 hours 6 minutes considering Eastern/Pacific time zones; more if you include Alaska/Hawaii.
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true, they could use the data they collected from the site to determine what transmission and colors to build more of. here's the but, they've already knew way ahead of time what colors they were going to have available and they know what colors sell well in their markets. if a market likes darker colors they are not going bombard them with lighter colors. here's a question for you since you were an intern in the paint dept of a toyota plant. did they tell you how long it takes a paint to be approved by toyota before it even goes on a car? in regards to the transmission they already know through build supply what % will be built in manuals vs. autos per country and region. for the united states i would think 60/40 where for the U.K. it would be more 90/10.
time zones? omg...