Johnson Controls

Johnson Controls - The Georgetown Plant

The Georgetown Plant of Johnson Controls manufactured automobile seats for the Toyota automobile manufacture. Johnson Controls was organized in four groups: Controls, Automotive, Plastic, Batteries. As the world's largest supplier of automotive seating systems, Johnson prided itself on the flexibility of operations.

Adopting Japanese philosophies of kaizen, Operations have been constantly improving yielding over $1 million in savings. With the addition of robots and process changes, Johnson has also been able to help efficiencies. They have identified bottlenecks such as the die changes that now take up a faction of the time.

With all the changes and improvements Johnson Controls have been through over the years, the operations are in a jigsaw or zig-zag pattern.

Objective

Management has neglected to do central planning in their operations. With new requirements from their Toyota business partners, Johnson Controls will be investing into new facilities to accommodate the needs of their customers.

Lyndon B Johnson Can Shove It

Ban Johnson, Garry Herrman, Thos. Lynch -- World S...

Bryan & Gov. Johnson, Sacramento, Calif. (LOC)

The question is: What will the purpose of this new plant be?

Support excess operations

Offer new manufacturing options

Since Johnson Controls adopted a JIT manufacturing process, it eliminated the possibility for unneeded Inventory. This allocation of space now allows Johnson Controls to maximize their operations and move towards a more integrated plant.

Alternatives

Johnson Controls has 2 alternatives for the new plant:

1. Utilize the new plant to concentrate on just foam seating. This would allow the new plant to double its capacity if they seek to serve other customers.

2. Use the plants excess capacity to make mechanisms in-house. This would eliminate 10 weeks in lead time and one variance of vertical integration

Recommendation

Johnson Controls should commit the new plant to 100% foam operations. This will allow for additional capacity for TMM or other customers if needed.

Rationale

Reviewing the operations of...