Nissan Operation Management Essay

In the book, The Toyota Way, Jeffery Liker provides an in-depth account of, not only the tools and methods of Toyota’s Production System, but also a broader explanation of the principles at work in the Toyota culture. This philosophy of manufacturing can be summarized through two important pillars: “Continuous Improvement” and “Respect for People.” These pillars help define Toyota’s approach to doing business, were the focus is on continuous learning and embracing change. By incorporating this ideology and its 14 principles into its manufacturing operations, Toyota has become the greatest manufacturer in the world. In this essay, I will provide a synopsis of Toyota’s 14 principles and also offer my own account of lean manufacturing at CNH Industrial.

Yet, the public perceptions may be at odds with the objective measures. In Toyota’s case, there have been indications that the quality level of the company’s products had fallen off in a span of few years. There are changes that have taken place during a period when most of the company’s close competitors, such as Fords, were producing more cost-effective and efficient automobiles. In addition, the company’s unique production approach and the emphasis on continuous improvement and learning coupled with a matrix structure are key reasons for the company’s leadership in the cat manufacturing industry. Toyota’s Production Systems (TPS) was founded in the principles of “Just-in-time. This approach has less opportunity for slack resources and focuses of the benefits of efficiency on the part of employees and reduction on waste resources (Griffin and Gregory, 5). Further, Toyota Company enacts its production system with the assistance of its human resources strategies, culture, and organizational structure. Toyota’s Production System emphasizes on learning and modesty when it comes to assessing past success and differentiated them from

The lean thinking has been established in a well manner in the competitive world. The countless business industries have proved their effective growth in terms of brand recognition and in terms of the good profit amount with the effective application of the lean production system in their operational activities. Toyota has added their name in the application of the lean thinking in their production process first in the global competitive market. The book “the Gold mine” written by Freedy and Michael Balle is a definite attempt to highlight the challenges that the leaders are facing in the perfect transformation of the lean thinking in their operational activities. This essay has discusses the direct connection between the content the

The Japanese automakers such as Toyota are dangerous competitors for the General Motors Corporation and the have scrambled for quite a large part of market shares if the GM in America and the global markets. The Japanese competitors cut down the cost tremendously by lean production. However, the production cost is still high in the General Motors Corporation. And the inefficiency of production cause the high price of its automobiles and the market share shrinks accordingly. (Coffey, 2005) Especially in face of the financial crisis, the General Motors Corporation has much to learn form lean production to cut down its production prices.

Toyota production system organize manufacturing and logistics at Toyota, including the interaction with suppliers and customers. Toyota was able to much reduce lead-time and cost using the Toyota production system, while improving at the same time. This enabled it to become one of the largest companies in the world. Toyota applied lessons by reducing the amount of inventory they would hold only to the level that its employees would need for a small period of time. This is called just-in-time (JIT) inventory system.

After the 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami that hit Japan, Nissan was able to recover faster than other leading automobile manufactures, such as Toyota and Honda. Nissan was able to recover so quickly because the company had a crisis plan already in place, which involved international connections, relationships and deals with suppliers. In this essay, Nissan’s operation management functions will be discussed, in addition to the critical path method (CPM) and the program evaluation and review technique (PERT) and how these methods can be fused with the company’s project management.

This business brief will discuss Autoliv, a Fortune 500 company who manufactures automotive safety components (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). Autoliv has over 80 plants in more than 32 countries, all of which run on a lean manufacturing system, which is referred to as “Autoliv Production System (APS) (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). Toyota pioneered the principles that the APS is based on (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). Another A lean system allows businesses to improve operations, by getting rid of the “unwanted waste”, such as overproduction, transportation, waiting, motion, inventory, defects, etc (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013).

Cost leadership strategy- Toyota uses cost leadership strategy to drive it cost lower through the just in time (JIT) manufacturing method which they also refer to as Toyota Production System which is abbreviated an TPS. This strategy addresses cost leadership strategy by mianimizing waste , inventory cost, and respond time. With this the business achieves maximum business efficiency.

Ever since the Second World War, Japan has decided to become an export driven economy, and the Japanese have been fast to recover its economy by competing fiercely in the ever increasingly saturated market. The products they are churning out are of good reliability and they often undercut its competitors by a huge margin to win the contract. As illustrated in the case of Hitachi at a sales presentation in 1985, Hitachi stressed to undercut its competitors severely. (Fallows 1993) Japan owed its rapid industralisation process to the huge domestic exports. The export ranged from the early days textile to automobiles and later on, high technologies products such as semiconductors. Japan invested heavily on research and development to create high value products to make it desirable to the world. As a result of the severe undercutting of competitors. Japan’s enterprise have to come out with several ways to enhance efficiency to ensure profitability. Toyota created a system called Just-In-Time (JIT) which emphasize on the redundancy of keeping live inventory. (Uno, 1987) It was first created in the 1950s and later slowly dispersed into the different industries and plants in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s. It requires close and collaborative relations with all suppliers for it to work.

Lean manufacturing originated long before Toyota and Ford, however the thought that it originated with Toyota is flattering since they are the ones who perfected it. By creating the Toyota Production System (TPS), Toyota found a better way to produce large quantities of product efficiently with eliminating the waste factor and while cutting down cost. Taiichi Ohno a former Toyota vice president promoted the idea of JIT (Just-in-Time) which means “producing the necessary units in the necessary quantities at the necessary time.” (Monden) Which leads to Toyota’s ultimate goal in the TPS is to improve productivity for better return in investment. To have continuous flow in a production system Toyota sought out to achieve the concept of JIT and autonomation . Since the TPS is what creates the parts who monitors the JIT system? The kanban system which is an informational system that controls quantities being produce in each process. As the discussion carries on throughout this paper about Toyota and their use of the kanban system the topic

In the 1990s, Toyota Production System (TPS) and Lean manufacturing (or lean production) were established and executed with significant

In March of 2011, northeastern Japan was struck by one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded. The magnitude 9 quake (Oskin, 2015) triggered a devastating tsunami, killing thousands, damaging the country’s infrastructure and paralyzing all private, public, and government entities. One of the businesses disrupted by the disaster was Nissan Motor Company LTD, a multinational auto manufacturer producing automobiles under the brand names of Nissan, Infiniti, and Datsun. This paper will discuss how Nissan’s quick-thinking Operations Management (OM) team responded to the crisis with rapid efficiency, helping it to capture a competitive advantage over other Japanese auto makers and succeed in its recovery from this monumental natural disaster.

Toyota is famous for their production system called Just-In-Time inventory (JIT) strategy which is referred as a production strategy to employ an increase in the level of efficiency and reduce waste by receiving goods only in the form they are required in the production process; this reduces inventory costs. This method calls for the producers to be capable of forecasting demand accurately. The main benefits associated the Just-In-Time inventory strategy includes reducing the setup

The Toyota Production System is built around two key elements that maximize efficiency. The first, is that only items that will be sold are produced. The second is the use of a ‘Just-in-time’ system that ensures smooth, uninterrupted processing. Toyota Production System regards work-in-progress stockpiles as a waste of time and space that often times cover up inefficiencies in the production process. Problems with the just-in-time system become more apparent when work-in-progress stocks are reduced, allowing for problems to be more easily identified and solved. To solve these problems, Toyota embraces the philosophy of Kaizen, which means, ‘continuous improvement’, where employees on the production line are encouraged to be the ones to come up with solutions.

Toyota Production System (TPS) focuses on the philosophy of eliminating all waste. It can be trace back to its origin – automatic loom which was firstly introduce by Sakichi Toyota. During the past few decays, TPS has evolved through generations by trial and error to improve the efficiency. This is mainly based on the concept of JIT.