Operations Management and Challenges Faced by Toyota Motor Manufacturing

Operations Management
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Operations Management
It is a common practice for companies to borrow ideas from more successful entities for survival in the increasingly competitive world. Toyota, being one of the most successful companies, has been inspirational to many other companies, both in the automotive sector and those outside this sector. Toyota serves as a perfect example because of its understanding of both the local and international marketing dynamics, which has made it an ideal entity for those organizations that also seek to make similar progress. Despite this level of success, all companies also suffer from various shortcomings. An aspiring organization should be able to identify such challenges and avoid them. The provided case study highlights some of the mistakes that the Toyota motor corporation has made, which should not be adopted. The company experienced some major challenges in the US market in 1992 that can be helpful to an aspiring company on what approaches are more effective at solving problems.
The company had exhibited immeasurable efficiency in its production process through its TPS system that was characterized by the Just-In-Time production and the jidoka approaches. As it ventured into the United States market, it identified a suitable suppliers of some of the parts that would bring unnecessary delays in the production process. It contacted TMM manufacturing to manufacture seats for its Camry model, which had been widely accepted in the US market. The company successfully trained TMM and synchronized it with its production processes. Consequently, it experienced a seamless production process that ensured minimum errors and saved a lot of time. However, the main challenge came when the company decided to create a new model of the Camry. The mistake that resulted was the sudden change in the production process without sufficient preparation of TMM in readiness for the change. As the company made the transition, TMM found it hard to keep up with the change.
Change is important for any organization because of the changing customer needs. As people interact with different products, they constantly compare them to the already available ones and make important decisions on whether to stick to the already existing products or change to more improved ones. While such changes are important, it is also crucial that the transformation is done systematically. According to Dastur (2011), change is difficult to accomplish in an organization because it is related to the way that people’s minds work. Normally, when one engages in an activity repeatedly, their brain adjusts itself and relegates the work to the subconscious section. Therefore, when the person undertakes the activity, a larger part of it is handled by the subconscious mind whereas the active mind handles only a fraction of it.
Introduction of a change presents a challenge to the subconscious mind, which in turn perceives it as a threat because the change will require reprogramming. According to Stark (2010), this fear explains why the employees tend to cling to their past ways of doing things. In the case of the Toyota and TMM seat company, the suppliers were used to a specific way of doing things and after several years of practice, the mind of the employees had already adapted to the routine process. Changing the process made it difficult to adapt immediate and maintain the production pace. Besides, the change was complicated by the difference in seat specifications in terms of features, further requiring the complete reprogramming of the people’s minds.
One important lesson learned from this case is the importance of gradual change over fast change. An organization that seeks to implement a change should begin planning as early as possible. As Erickson (2015) posits, change is a process that should be approached more carefully. Such decisions also tie to the need to have a thorough marketing research team, who will be able to predict future market changes and advise the organization on when to initiate the change process. Toyota, being a company with massive resources, should have allowed its market research team sufficient time to conduct a thorough research on the market needs and project the requirements in the coming ye...