Assembly Planbook - April 2008 - (Page 29) smart strategy. He says the best way to instill quality upstream is to have a good design for every component. Thorough communication of the requirements with the supplier through drawings, specs and quality control plans is important. Of course, it’s also critical to pick suppliers that are capable of meeting the expected requirements. “Even having done all this, as I assume Boeing and Toyota have, there will still be some degree of problems with some suppliers,” warns Smalley. “On a regular basis, supplier performance needs to be reviewed. Problems in areas such as quality, cost or delivery need to be fed back to the responsible party for improvement. “When problems are significant, Toyota will dispatch technical experts to the supplier to raise urgency and provide guidance as needed,” explains Smalley. “Still, all this is difficult when you are dealing with hundreds of suppliers and tens of thousands of part numbers. Problems will unfortunately occur from suppliers. Some sort of system needs to be put in place to both proactively prevent problems and reactively deal with what does get through.” Toyota executives have publicly apologized to investors and they have vowed that the embarrassing quality problems will be addressed. During a speech at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit earlier this year, Katsuaki Watanabe, Toyota’s president, urged all of his employees to take personal responsibility for the quality of the company’s cars and trucks. “Without improving quality, Toyota cannot expect to grow,” says Watanabe. “I believe that quantitative growth is the result of improved quality.” During a two-month internal study of why there have been so many recalls and quality control issues, Toyota discovered that it may have outsourced too much engineering and that engineers may have rushed out some products without conducting enough quality checks or without building a sufficient amount of prototypes. The automaker has decided that it will build more physical prototypes in the future to address the issue. To continually search for ways to streamline assembly processes and improve quality, Toyota operates large training centers at its plants in Georgetown, KY, and Motomachi, Japan. The Global Production Centers are important tools in the company’s quality crusade. They teach employees the best way to apply various principles of the Toyota Production System. All Toyota managers are expected to be able to do the jobs of everyone they supervise and to teach their employees how to solve problems. Toyota is also looking at how material handling can be fine-tuned to improve quality in its plants. For instance, the automaker is re-examining how parts are delivered to the assembly line. At its sprawling Tsutsumi plant in Toyota www.assemblymag.com April 2008 / ASSE M B LY 29 http://cincinnati-test.com http://www.assemblymag.com
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