In the early 1980s, Japanese auto makers contemplated building cars in North America. At
that time, it was unclear whether cars produced outside Japan could live up to their
hard-earned reputation of high quality at low cost. In 1992 Toyota meets a
Serious problem, a growing number of cars were sitting off the line with defective seats or
with no seats at all. Today, we will talk about this case and offer some our suggestions.
We know TMMs sole seat supplier was KFS, who operated on a sequential pull system
which synchronize with TMMs assembly line. However, the case indicates theres quality
deficiency on TMMs production which reduced the run ratio to 85% from 95% and
impacted regular delivery.
According our analyzing, we think the seats mainly account for quality deficiency. Not
much long before, TMM re-designed the back seat by replacing its metal hooks with
plastic ones. Given the weaker strength of plastic hooks than metal ones, it was easier to
break off, causing frequent interruption on TMMs assembly line and therefore, reducing
efficiency of production as well. The reason attribute to such problem is not clear,
however, through intensive meditation, the possible reasons can be confined within
following aspects:
Defective design of hooks on seats.
Mishandling of assembly workers.
Defective quality of rough material applied by seat supplier.
Deficiency on TPS.
We can ascertain the exact reason by scrutinizing above aspects respectively.
Defective design of hooks on seats.
The defect of hook caused run ratio at TMM reduced 10%, however, at TMC, sharing
same production system and design of hooks, did not encountered same problem as which
