Monthly Archive for December, 2009

Logistics is an extremely important component of the supply chain. It has two roles: (1) inbound logistics, which is responsible for transporting parts and materials from the tier 1 suppliers to the OEM plants; (2) outbound logistics, which is responsible for the distribution of vehicles from the assembly plants to the dealers. In this article [...]

Imagine you are a supplier to Toyota. What is your role in the Toyota supply chain? What is your expected productivity improvement over time? How would your experience as a part of Toyota’s supply chain differ from your experience supplying other auto original equipment manufacturers? How would your processes have to operate to synchronize with [...]

Toyota adopts different planning methods depending on which types of parts are involved. Some of the planning processes are unique to Toyota and so are worth contrasting with general practice. There are many parts ordering processes for the different categories of parts. The four broad part categories are local parts, long lead time parts, in-house [...]

Production scheduling requires close coordination between sales and plant operations. In Toyota Learning, we will explain how the production schedule is used to provide consistent and continuous flow of materials and vehicles throughout the supply chain. In Sales and Operations Planning we described how information is gathered, both top-down and bottom-up, to create a three-month [...]

Sales and operations planning (S&OP) is a critical component of the supply chain planning process. It is linked upstream to the mix planning process and downstream to the production scheduling process. The goal of S&OP is to generate a production plan that balances demand and supply in a profitable way. The end point of this [...]

Mix planning is an important process for companies that manufacture and distribute products to retailers in multiple market areas. For vehicle manufacturers, this decision is extremely important because of the complexity of a vehicle. This complexity creates millions of possible vehicle build combinations or variants. The objective of mix planning is to reduce the variants [...]

The Toyota Production System (TPS) is the benchmark used throughout the world as the foundation for “lean” thinking. At Toyota, the TPS practices and principles extend well beyond the factory walls to include the extended supply chain and require some crucial choices to ensure supply chain efficiency. This chapter explains how Toyota plans and operates [...]