Toyota Motor Manufacturing Case

Essay by TeeJayOrTjUniversity, Bachelor'sA+, March 2004

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1)As manager of assembly, Doug Friesen should address the problem by focusing on this exception and reasons for allowing such a deviation from Toyota Motors Manufacturing (TMM) normal way of handling problems. He should also look at the communication and synchronization between Kentucky Framed Seat (KFS), the seat supplier, and the plant. One issue that he should look at is why these cars were sitting in the overflow lot for so long. KFS was making special deliveries of new seats twice a day to replace the defective seats, but still there were cars with defective seats sitting in overflow lot for over four days. The other seat issues that Mr. Friesen should look into are the problems caused by cross-threading, breaking of the hook, and the delivery of the wrong seat by KFS. His attention should be focused on finding the root of the problem. He should go down and watch the team who installs the seats into the cars and see if he sees any problems there.

He should also consider taking a few minutes out of the day to talk to those employees and see what they think could be done. He should also consider going over to KFS and watching there production lines to see if he can notice any significant problems. Perhaps KFS is being overworked with the new increase in seat variations and finding another supplier or perhaps expanding their own plant to build seats on their own like other companies. Doug should focus his efforts to find the root of the problem and determine if the solution is feasible. Time just needs to be invested to investigate the problem and have the company think together to figure out the problem and solution.

2)There are a few different options that I believe Mr. Friesen could...