Quote:
Originally Posted by Dimman
One of the girls I work with is a production assistant, and she says that there are whole courses on how companies do, in fact, make very scientific attempts to forecast future demand. Something to do with lean manufacturing. The more accurate they get, the more efficient production can be. And 'The House of Toyota' is a whole section in one of her courses.  |
Cool man. Yeah Lean Manufacturing is the same as the Toyota Production System (TPS). I took a class to get TPS Certified back in '06. It employs JIT (just-in-time) meaning every car part, nut, bolt holds value (essentially money). There are ways to efficiently manage the flow of parts from the moment they leave suppliers' docks to the moment they hit the assembly line such that they don't arrive too early nor too late but "just in time." This keeps overhead waaay down. Unlike the old traditional American Big 3's way of hoarding parts in bins for months unused costing millions in real estate because that "storage space" could be used in a more bang-for-buck way (building cars). Toyotas are built "lean" but highly reliable and savings trickle down to us consumers.
TPS also employs Kaizen (continuous improvement) in manufacturing. This philosophy is employed in the cars too... look up specs on any Toyota you'll find somewhat significant design improvements made every year even if in the same generation run (things like passenger side airbag, drive-by-wire, VVT-i, revised gear syncros and shift gates, revised suspension, re-tuned engine making +40 more hp, etc.). That means the FR-S design won't truly be 100% done til its final model year.
