Toyota Kfs Seats Case Study

Toyota Group 4

1. As Doug Friesen, what would you do to address the seat problem? Where would you focus your attention and solution efforts? What options exist that you would recommend? Why?

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Graph 1 The Inspection  Flow of Current Problems

Problem: Continuous external delivery of defective seats from KFS resulting in a reduced run ratio of TMM.

As considered by our group, we would like to take the following steps to address the seat problem from three aspects :

1. External aspect:

The problems rooting from external of  TMM are mainly from the following circumstances in KFS: 1.The manufacturing procedure  in the KFS may have some defects and improving room. 2. The quality of KFS seats may need to be improved. So there are some potential steps to take:

1.1 Toyota should contact with KFS about their Quality Control Process, maybe by placing their own staff because they were allowing to send defective seats to TMM.

1.2 Placement of a group of KFS people to repair the seats with defections on assembly line.

1. Internal aspect:

The operation procedure of TMM also has some improving room: The variety of seat choices has increased according to the expansion of car styles and the offered choices to customers.

            2.1 Toyota needs to consider if it is necessary to have so many types of seats and to increase the versatility of seats.  

2.2 Toyota should find the reason why there are occasional incidents of

cross-threading, that is, when a member shot a bolt at an angle. This might indicate that workers do not have a standardized installing method.  Dough Frieson needs to standardize the installation process for team members.

2.3 Toyota should consider how to prevent workers from accidentally damage the seat covering with hand tools. Since this is a rare incident, I would suggest him to communicate with workers who have encountered this problem and ask for reasons.

2.4 Evaluate the hook problem, that is, whether the plastic hook is strong enough. Since Tsutsumi plant doesn’t have this problem and the negative impact of the plastic hook has decreased, Frieson needs to keep collecting data and evaluate this problem.

1. Coordination:

The coordination between TMM and KFS may also have some problems: 1. The handwriting format of orders may cause some confusion. 2. The demand-supply match may have some surplus supply.

3.1 Toyota should determine what products or parts they need from suppliers, and eliminate unnecessary parts if it’s possible.

3.2 Toyota may establish a standardized continuous operation procedure that maximize the efficiency in terms of capacity and quality.

            3.3 KFS employees may not understand the hand-written orders due to manual                              

            communications. They may implement an Enterprise Resource Planning    

            (ERP) to improve communication.

We would recommend these options:

In the short term, ask KFS sent a group of people to repair the seats with defections on assembly line. Also, implement an ERP in both  KFS and TMM. Reconsider the varieties of seats.