Operations Management

Analyzing Toyota’s Recipe for Success – The Toyota Way

The fundamental reason for Toyota’s success in the global marketplace lies in the so called “Toyota way”. The Toyota Way is not only about technology and efficiency, it is about doing the right thing for the company, its employees, the customer and the society as a whole.

In other words, the incredible success of the Toyota way is a direct result of operational excellence. Toyota has turned operational excellence into a strategic weapon. This operational excellence is only in part based on tools and quality improvement methods made famous by Toyota in the manufacturing world, such as JIT, Kaizen, and one-piece-flow.… Read the rest

Abey Francis

Postponement Strategy in Supply Chain Management

Postponement is first implemented in manufacturing processes to reduce cost of inventory and improve service level within the company while the product variety increases. The concept of postponement is to delay the change in form, identity and place to the latest possible point until customer commitments have been obtained. It is by exploiting the commonality between items and by designing the production and distribution process so as to delay the point of differentiation. Postponement is closely intertwined with modularization where products in a certain product family are designed where all of them consist of different standardized units. With modularization, combination of different standardized sub-components allows the producing of different end products.… Read the rest

Abey Francis

Cellular Manufacturing – Meaning, Implementation and Benefits

A cellular manufacturing layout is in direct contradiction to the traditional production line. In the production line, numerous workers are needed to service a single production line running from receiving of  raw material  to shipping of finished product. A breakdown in staffing or machinery in any part of the line nearly always resulted in the entire process being idled until the specific difficulty in the line was repaired, or re-crewed. With cellular manufacturing, production is divided among groups, or cells, of workers and production machinery. Thus, the breakdown of one cell, due to equipment malfunction or staffing problems, does not radically affect the rest of the production process.… Read the rest

Abey Francis

The Toyota Production System (TPS)

A key success factor that enabled Toyota to become the world’s most successful automobile company is its famous manufacturing method, the so called Toyota Production System (TPS). The evolution of the Toyota production system approach can be traced to the period immediately following the second world war when the economic outlook was uncertain and human, natural and capital resources were in limited supply. Against this background, the most important objective of the Toyota System has been to increase production efficiency by consistently and thoroughly eliminating waste. This concept developed between 1948 and 1975 by Toyota’s former president Toyoda Kiichiro and later by Ohno Taiichi and Eiji Toyoda represents a highly efficient production system that is similar to that of Henry Ford several decades earlier, although Toyota’s approach to both product development and distribution proved to be much more consumer-friendly and market-driven.… Read the rest

Abey Francis

Seven Basic Tools of Quality

For the reason of human factor and human reliability, it is inevitable that there could be occurred some kind of faults and errors even in well planned and technically equipped organizations and systems. The errors or unplanned risks that might be happened during the project, can lead the customer to have negative opinion about the management team. Also some faults and risks might not being able to fix or might be too expensive to overcome it. Therefore a well prepared quality management plan is essential for an organization in order to ensure that the management plan that the project team works on, meet the customer satisfaction and their needs.… Read the rest

Abey Francis

Ultimate Guide to Cause & Effect Diagram

The cause & effect diagram is the brainchild of Kaoru Ishikawa, who pioneered quality management processes in the Kawasaki shipyards, and in the process became one of the founding fathers of modern management. The cause and effect diagram is used to explore all the potential or real causes (or inputs) that result in a single effect (or output). Causes are arranged according to their level of importance or detail, resulting in a depiction of relationships and hierarchy of events. This can help you search for root causes, identify areas where there may be problems, and compare the relative importance of different causes.… Read the rest

Abey Francis