OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Operations Management at Toyota and Ford Motors



Introduction:

This assignment is discussing the different production practices at Toyota and Ford Motors.

Production process at Toyota:

The production method in Toyota has been built taking into consideration three crucial factors; these factors are continuous improvement in the process of production, proper management of the logistics & employee loyalty. The whole manufacturing process is planned well in advance & short plans are developed that describes the step by step procedure, through the use of short plans all the required materials and inventory are manufactured and assembled well before time the next step starts. The logistics management deals with the supplier relationships of Toyota, i.e. the delivery of products to the customer on time. (Hounshell 1984,Pp.100) Loyalty of the employees is the crucial aspect, that can only be applied with success where the employees are provided with freedom, and their responsibilities are defined, help them to do work according to the defined processes. Toyota is following a policy that allows every employee to give their feedback & suggestions, & majority of the feedback is applied in the processes of the organization for improvement. This maximizes the confidence level of the employees, and has a positive impact on the performance, and the efficiency of their workers higher than the industry average.

The management of logistics is another aspect, where Toyota has improved its association with its suppliers, & therefore, has enhanced its product delivery system. The logistics management of Toyota has helped them improve their rapport with their suppliers, which has resulted in well-timed delivery of quality products to the customers of Toyota. The suppliers are making sure that they deliver the required raw materials on time, and whenever required, they help Toyota in the assembling of new parts of machinery. (Michael 2009 Pp.628)Toyota is well known for maintaining profitable associations with its suppliers, and vendors, and the companies like to work with Toyota because of the quality of relationship managed with them. Their association with their suppliers helps Toyota in providing their customers with the best possible quality products within the least amount of time.

Then another strategy used by Toyota to make sure that meet their customer needs is the minimizing the waste material. The short plans made by Toyota are make sure that the wastage in their production process has to wastage of products. The complete elimination of wastage; is the aim of Toyota. At Toyota, the short-term plans are more importance as compared to the long-term plans. According to the management of Toyota, the long-term plan consumes a lot of resources and time and reaps results after a long period. When implementing a short-term plan, the machinery is occupied with only one activity, which saves a lot of time for other activities and gives the labor and the machinery space for other activities. Whenever there is a problem with the machine it stops working immediately, the problem is analyzed on the spot and the cause of the problem is ...