Well golly, maybe Ford should pay this guy a million dollars to explain it to them. Apparently they're all retarded and don't employ any logistics experts or industrial engineers.
The #1 reason Toyota generally outperforms Ford is that Toyota is not burdened with an extremely expensive and aging union work force.
>* is more efficient - less material lying around
>* reduces costs - less inventory
Left off: *Leaves the whole line catastrophically vulnerable to supply chain disruptions and equipment failures.
A lot of these JIT oriented production methods and floorspace optimizations associated with Japan are presented as clear win innovations. The truth is that historically Japanese plants had tight warehousing and floor space constraints and had to optimize for that. If you're not so constrained they're often silly ideas.
The genius of Toyota is that they now operate fundamentally on the "pull" system, where customer demand pulls to have products created rather than the traditional approach of "pushing" products on the consumer and hoping there will be demand for them.
Using the pull concept, Toyota redefined their entire management system to create only customer value when that value was demanded, and eliminate all waste: Lean Management. They have taken the idea to such extremes now that if you need spare parts at a Toyota dealer, you will find that only a few parts are stocked, and when the stock runs low they produce new parts on demand. These guys are unbeatable using the old way of doing business - they can do their work with this approach twice as fast with half the labor required and radically higher quality.
Several other manufacturers have taken on Lean as well, such as Porsche. For those who don't, it will only be a downhill slide into oblivion against the Lean competition.
I worked for Ford 18 years ago. They were well aware of these production systems. They knew Toyota was a leader and they always compared themselves with Toyota. I think, their problems are more complex than this.
The #1 reason Toyota generally outperforms Ford is that Toyota is not burdened with an extremely expensive and aging union work force.
>* is more efficient - less material lying around >* reduces costs - less inventory
Left off: *Leaves the whole line catastrophically vulnerable to supply chain disruptions and equipment failures.
A lot of these JIT oriented production methods and floorspace optimizations associated with Japan are presented as clear win innovations. The truth is that historically Japanese plants had tight warehousing and floor space constraints and had to optimize for that. If you're not so constrained they're often silly ideas.