Signature Assignment: Toyota And Ford Supply Chain

Landon Orchard 292 Windermere Court West, London, Ontario, Canada 519-661-7006 Landon Orchard is currently an undergraduate business management major at Ashland University, Ashland, Ohio North Central Ohio APICS Chapter Full-time undergraduate student

When looking in “My Grades,” you will see the names of the activities have been shortened.

A Customized Textbook, Supply Chain Management SCHM2301, ISBN9781308037400 Copies are on reserve in the library

In this project, we will be studying Canadian Tire Auto Services’ main supply chain strategies. Canadian Tire provides many automotive services for their clients with many locations across the countries. Our goal for this project will also be to look into Canadian Tire’s logistics operations, their process of supplier selection, and evaluation. We will also look to study their use of the latest IS/IT innovations. We will then conclude our project by realizing the importance of supply chain management integration, as well as, the challenges and practices within a global supply chain.

For more than 50 years, Toyota Motor Corporation has been one of the world’s leading manufacturers of motor vehicles in the United States. It was born a Japanese company in 1935 and came to America in 1957. Now headquartered in Toyota City, Japan, it employs more than 300 thousand employees globally (Toyota Motor Corporation Company Profile, 2012). In addition Toyota is a global marketing organization. It strategically operates primarily through Japan, Asia, Europe, and North America; but its vehicles are sold in more than 170 countries and regions across the globe (Toyota Motor Corporation Company Profile, 2012). The Toyota brand is traditionally defined by brand attributes such as global leadership, innovation,

Over the years, the U. S. auto industry's market has been experiencing fluctuations due to many reasons including: price, quality and foreign competition. General Motors Corporation (GM) which had been the leading car and truck manufacturer had been experiencing declining market share and facing stiff competition from both U.S manufacturers and foreign imports such as the Asian auto producers that included Toyota, Honda and Nissan. The main reason for increased foreign competition was that foreign cars were more fuel efficient, smaller, less expensive, and often more reliable than their American counterparts.

As director of Supply Chain Systems, Teri Takai recommends implementing virtual integration strategies from companies like Dell to portions of Ford’s supply chain strategy. Although there are several key differences between the companies, the restructuring plans of Ford 2000 have set a viable foundation to implement Dell’s virtual integration strategy in inventory management, customer service and support and suppliers’ management. The redesign of the process must include design not only of the supply chain but also of fulfillment, forecasting, purchasing, and a variety of other functions that historically been considered independently within the Ford hierarchy. Teri

65 years ago , in 1937 , Toyota Motor Corporation was founded first as a subsidiary of Toyota Automatic Works, one of the largest manufacturers of knitting machines led by the "King of Inventions " Sakichi Toyoda . To date , Toyota is the second largest automaker in units sold and net sales. It is by far the largest Japanese car manufacturer , producing more than 4.5 million vehicles per year , equivalent to one every six seconds. But like any company , on the way there have been painful events . In 1950 Toyota suffered its first and only strike. Workers and direction out of this situation with

2) What advantages does Dell derive from virtual integration? How important are these advantages in the auto business?

Toyota’s strength is creating the best cars at lowest cost and developing new concepts and products within shortest timeframe. To accomplish this, they use a quite unorthodox manufacturing system. The management of Toyota is convinced that success is not only achieved by striving to optimal efficiency. It seriously invests in their employees in order to ameliorate their capabilities and therefore as a final result improve the strength and capabilities of the entire company. Ideas are shared horizontally as well as vertically and management constantly stimulates the process. The company sees the employees as the essential key assets of their

Comparison and Contrast of General Motors and Toyota Motor Thomas Hong, Ph.D. The Impact of Technology on Organization University of Phoenix November 12, 2007

Porter’s generic strategies describe how a company attains competitive advantage across its chosen market scope. There are three generic strategies-cost leadership, differentiation and

main strategy for the North American market is to aim for higher sales, while raising the proportion of locally produced automobiles. Toyota Motor Corp have reached a stage where investments made over the last several years to expand production capacity are beginning to show returns and improved profitability can be expected. Toyota’s goal is to bolster local production through additional investment, and contribute to the regional economy by expanding its operations. At present, our production capacity in North America is approximately 1.25 million units (including our joint venture with GM). However, Toyota Motor Corp plan to boost this to 1.45 million units during 2003.

The generic strategy allows the firm to react to the five forces better than their competitors (Worthington & Britton, 2006). According to Porter (1985), an organization can enjoy competitive advantage by focusing on the generic competitive strategies. The organization could enjoy competitive edge by either offering the product at low cost or differentiating the product from the competitors or by focusing on a specific market. Porter (1985) emphasized that the generic strategies should be at the centre of the strategic plans.

When managing logistic in an organization there are hundreds of aspects that need to be taken into account. Here is a particular aspect of Toyota Motor Engineering & manufacturing North America Inc. (TEMA) logistic management that is centralised and de-centralised logistic. According to [3], centralised logistic means that the all or most of the authorised