Toyota Production system

Everyone else has been trying, but none has yet succeeded to match the outstanding performance of the Toyota production system. The system grew naturally out of the workings of the company over five decades. As a result, it has never been written down. Steven Spear and H. Kent Bowen have done an extensive research for four years on what makes the Toyota production system standout from others. They’ve found that, whenever Toyota defines a specification, it is establishing sets of hypotheses that can then be tested. In other words, it is following the “scientific method”. Steven Spear and H. Kent Bowen have summarized Toyota’s production strategy under four rules.

Rule number one, ‘All work shall be highly specified as to content, sequence, timing, and outcome’. In other words, they have introduced well-defined, timed sequence of steps for a particular job and for a particular employee. Employee is expected to follow the steps exactly as specified during the constrained time and if he was unable to do so or if there is a problem, it will be immediately apparent and the employee and the supervisor can move to correct the problem right away.

While first rule looks at getting the specified task done, the second rule looks at how people connect.  It explains ‘every customer supplier connection must be direct, and there must be an unambiguous yes-or-no way to send requests and receive responses’ In other words every connection must be standardized and direct, unambiguously specifying the people involved, the form and quantity of the goods and services to be provided, the way requests are made by each customer, and the expected time in which the requests will be met.

As of rule number four, ‘any improvement must be made in accordance with the scientific method, under the guidance of a teacher, at the lowest possible level in the organization’. Toyota believes that people are the most significant corporate asset and investments in their knowledge and skills are necessary to build competitiveness. Each plant and major business unit in the Toyota Group employs a number of Toyota Production System consultants whose primary responsibility is to help senior managers move their organizations toward the ideal. Many of these individuals have received intensive training at Toyota's Operations Management Consulting Division. Usually Front line workers make the improvements to their own jobs, and their supervisors provide direction and assistance as teachers.

In Toyota’s philosophy, an ideal employee, or group of employees or a machine is; is defect free; can deliver one request at a time; can supply on demand in the version requested; can deliver immediately; can produce without wasting any materials, labor, energy, or other resources and can produce in a work environment that is safe physically, emotionally, and professionally for every employee.

NUMMI; “New United Motor Manufacturing Inc.” was a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors. Before they became a joint venture, general motors factory was known as “worst plant in the world” By joining as a joint venture, together they changed that. General Motors was responsible for marketing and sales while Toyota was responsible for production process. Toyota totally turned around the production factory from worst to the best in America. NUMMI was very careful when hiring employees, every applicant went through three days of production simulations, written examinations and interviews. The NUMMI production system not only made people work harder, it made them work smarter as well. More than 90% of the employees were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their work.

NUMMI’s production system was finely tuned, superbly integrated and exceptionally consistent. The assembly line was a just in time (JIT) operation and it greatly reduced the work in progress. Each machine and process was designed to detect malfunctions, missing parts and improper assemblies automatically. Every job was carefully analyzed to achieve maximum efficiency. Job rotation was standard and every worker was cross trained in every tasks. It only differed with the production system in Japan in only two aspects. It had a strong commitment to social context of work and standardization.

Toyota revolutionized the production process. It never stopped innovating. This is the reason it’s still the world’s largest car manufacturer.

References 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System

http://www.toyota.com.au/toyota/company/operations/toyota-production-system

Electronic Trucking Logs 2014 Version

The main focus of this was to gain awareness of the modern technologies associated with electronic truck logging and choosing the best EOBR to be installed in the trucks so that manual logs can be switched to electronic logs.

At the moment the drivers are equipped with a simple cell phone, which is their only method of communication with the home dispatch office while being on the road.  In the near future, it is highly likely that federal regulations would require the company to upgrade their log booking system to an electronic one. Therefore, industrial engineers in university of New York asked to look into the different types of EOBRs that exist on the market today and come up with the best system to be installed in the trucks in the future.

Most transportation industries prefer EOBR technology for data collection.  The federal government is also looking into the use of EOBR specially for enforcing hour-of-service regulation.  The intention of this technology is to find out information on some of the EOBRs available in the market. An EOBR is a system used to electronically track a Record of Duty Status (RODS). There are certain technical and performance standards that must be met, including being synchronized with a truck’s engine.

In today’s truck and fleet applications, EOBRs installed in commercial motor vehicles can monitor and record a whole host of data about the vehicle and its driver beyond just RODS. From electronic driver logs that track driver’s Hours of Service and electronic Driver Vehicle Inspection Reports (DVIR), to IFTA automation to driver behavior reporting on speeding, idling and hard braking. Many EOBRs integrate map and route solutions as well, which can help drivers navigate around construction and avoid high-traffic areas. EOBRs connect directly to a vehicle’s engine control module and store data, as well as transmit it wirelessly to the motor carrier. Therefore, analytic reports can help drivers and fleets manage performance more effectively to cut fuel costs, ensure timely vehicle maintenance, identify drivers for additional training before accidents occur and help provide real-time data to shippers for better customer service.

EOBR requires devices to automatically record a driver’s duty status and any changes in status, as well as the amount of time they operate the vehicle. If requested by law enforcement, drivers must be able to immediately deliver the required display information for the previous 7 days, plus the current day.

EOBR devices will record

• Name of driver and any co-driver
•  Duty status – “Off duty”, “Sleeper berth”
•  Date and time
• Location of the commercial motor vehicle (CMV) when a duty status changes
• Distance traveled
• 24-hour period starting time (e.g., midnight, 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m.)
• The multiday basis (7 or 8 days) used by the motor carrier to compute cumulative duty hours and driving time
• Truck or tractor and trailer number
•  Shipping document number(s), or name of shipper and commodity

Some of the benefits of EOBR are reduction of fuel cost.  Fleets can typically cut fuel consumption by 10-15%.  Drivers can gain about 15 minutes every day by cutting down the admin time.  There is also better CSA scores, over 50 customers have 10% or lower unsafe and fatigued driving scores.  There is also reduction in admin time. Carriers have shared that audit times have gone from weeks to days, and days to hours.

The scope of this blog is to research EOBR technology and how it could be used to replace the manual logging system that is currently being used. At the moment there is no law or any federal regulation suggesting that all trucking companies should have electronic logging systems in their trucks, but there is a high possibility that this law may come to pass in the near future with this new equipment.

References

http://www.omnitracs.com/eobrs

http://www.kellerencompass.com/

http://www.vdoroadlog.com/

http://www.jjkeller.com/shop/Product/J-J-Kellers-E-Logs

Automated parking lot system

This is a very new technology, which is used in the modern world to park their vehicles within a short period of time. Suppose you are in Mall Of America in Minneapolis, how long it take you to park the vehicle during the peak hours, even though it has more than 10000 parking slots. Industrial engineers in Dubai and Singapore came up with a sophisticated solution for this problem called automated parking system. There are two different kinds of parking systems,

• Automated parking
  
• Semi-automated parking
  

vehicles that are parked with a computer controlled motorized devices from a drop off location to a storage area with no human in the vehicle uses automated parking system. Semi-automated parking is a stacker device that can lift cars above one another up to four heights in the space of one parking spot. If the floor-to-floor heights are tall enough, they can fit in to a traditional ramp parking facility. Actually these parking lots can be seen in New York City, however these parking lots need human help to work.

Fully automated parking systems have five general types of movements.

• Separate devices for horizontal and vertical movements.
• Single device that does both horizontal and vertical movements.
• Circular systems.
• Ferries wheel, carousel or rotary lift.
• Individual pallets that can move the vehicle in multiple directions.

 

You might think these parking lots are more expensive than the normal parking lots. However it’s not true in Singapore, Japan and Dubai, because they have limited space and time, traditional parking lots cost more than this fully automated system. This new concept is designed to park many vehicles in a small footprint of land. This is one of the key aspects of stability in modern era of industrial engineering concepts. 

Currently several automated parking projects are on the book and many have been constructed. Right now nineteen automated facilities are being constructed in the United States of America. Many are in the proposal phase. Thus benefit of this automated parking facilities are unbelievable. 

• Parking cars densely, reducing the cubic volume by typically half of parking the same number of cars. This reduction implication for land use, creating green space and walkability.
• Cars can turn off once they enter the parking facility. Since no vehicle are driving and running their engine, greatly reduce all emission and reducing fuel use. Vitalization for emission is now not required or greatly reduced.
• No drivers enter the storage area, therefor lighting, one of the largest energy costs for a parking facility, is at a minimum.  

Automated parking structure save up to 83 percent in vehicle fuel emission, when it compares with conventional parking facilities. The amount of volatile gases saved by a 200 vehicles system is equal to removing 92 cars from the road each year or planting 67000 trees. (Arup Engineering 2011)

The concept of the machine age in the twentieth century has been a huge impact on our cities. Building and lives has been connected to the complex typology of movement. In fact the world famous industrial engineer Roger Corman said “A city made for speed is made for success”. This theory in the 21^st century has been focused on the road with the parking garage with building type. This parking garage building type by its relationship to the ideas of technology, traffic, communication, landscape, functionally and the idea of success lead the way in new sustainable vision.

Following are some links that would give you a better idea about the technology I have described in this article. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IfB2sh0bdI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwS1QwXqgpk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADHft2dC7ho

    

Industrial Engineering

I am senior industrial engineering student in North Dakota state university. This is a great opportunity to write down an explanation about the field, which I’m interested in mostly. I am a transfer student from Sri Lanka, and I haven’t heard of a major called industrial engineering back in my country. Although it is a new subject and a new concept to me, I love to work on this major.

An industrial engineer normally looks at a process and tries to improve that process. It’s a real ability to apply mathematical science and concept from the business world in order to come up with the systems of machines, best recourses, best places and best capacity. This major is very adoptive to different type of the systems, because we are focusing on the designing of the systems and improving the designed systems. Industrial engineering is the only major that has combined the traditional concept and apply to the business application prospective. These engineers have great experience in a variety of disciplines, which is essential for business functions in an efficient effective manner. They understand technical situations, and they are also good with numbers, can deal with finance people and they also good with explaining technical situations like, what is general capitalism customer satisfaction and potential, which always make the key role in the business industry. Actually industrial engineering is a fascinating major, because I feel it is important to have a broader horizon in different aspects of business and engineering. I think, this is the future of engineering.

Industrial engineers can work at different places like hospitals, banks, and manufacturing companies. Coca-Cola, Walmart, Nokia are run by industrial engineers. They have industrial engineering CEO positions. You can see, those companies are world famous companies run by industrial engineers, to gain that ability, we have to go through lots of statistical tools like creo, proactive, java, c++ and simulations.

Industrial engineers in a company, are the link between everything inside the process and the outside. Because in a company, we have technical engineers, mechanical engineers, operations, business management, that needs to work together to get a better outcome. A company needs a good personality to talk all of those different languages and link each and every step, in order to do that, they need an industrial engineer. They can understand the technology, product management skills and communicating the new ideas to the business, which is essential for today’s organization leadership challenges.   

Industrial engineers are utilized in any manufacturing business. Industrial engineering can be categorized in to four specializations. First is the production logistic and management which is about process production logistic theories by optimizing planning, inventory, lean time, efficiency of fixed resources. The second point is the financial engineering and the management. It’s specially focused on the financial sector and the risk management using financial products, which is a typical issue right now. Third one is the information technology management which is key improvement of operation management process. The fourth one is the health care technology and management, which is focused on improvement of progress in health care in advance by the medical technology to improve the process.

Engineering has been making huge contributions to the advancement of the technology. I’m proud to be at the forefront of this rapidly growing world.