Application of JIT in Toyota in India -Prof.

G K Sinha For many years after it was founded in the year 1937, Toyota was derided as company made up of bunch of farmers. It hired a lot of farmers to work on its assembly lines and, in fact, the founding familys name Toyoda meant abundant rice field in Japanese term. The word Toyota, however has no meaning in that language. Over a period of six decades, Toyota has acquired the most fearsome reputation in the industry for its exemplary manufacturing system, where cost and efficiencies are pared not just every day, but every second. During the first three months of 2007, Toyota sold more cars and trucks around the world than any other manufacturer, surpassing General Motors (GM) for the first time ever and ending one of the longest dominance in all of global industry. In this first quarter, Toyotas worldwide sales of cars and trucks reached 2.35 million as against GMs 2.26 million in the same period. Let us take a look at its low fat Bidadi (near Bangalore) operations- the maximum amount of raw material at the factory at any point of time doesnt exceed two hours production requirement; all finished cars leave the factory within 48 hours, and no dealer is sent more than 15 days stock. So, just how Toyota do it? The trick lies in its famous milk run, which involves picking up small quantities of supplies from vendor through out the day. This is how it worksevery morning small trucks leave a central stocking point (there is one each in Pune, Delhi, and Chennai), picking up supplies from the local vendors. These trucks then return to the hub, where the supplies are transferred to bigger trucks, which leave for the Bidadi Plant every day. For Vendors based in and around Bangalore, the milk runs are straight from the plant to the vendor and back. Transystem Logistics International, a joint venture between Travel Corporation of India and Mitsui & Co., is the sole transport and logistics provider of Toyota to facilitate the JIT supplies for its Bidadi plant. Every day, 261 trucks of Transystems log more than a lakh kilometers picking up parts from Toyotas 83 vendors in 20 different states of the country, though most of them are near Bangalore. It has three Cross-Dock facilities in Gurgaon, Chennai, and Pune. On the 25 th of every month Toyota sends out a

detailed schedule to all its vendors and Transystems, informing them of the raw material requirement and production schedule. Based on this schedule, Transystem does milk-runs at each of the four regions, aggregating the parts at the three cross-docks. Here,, the components are loaded on to a bigger truck, which then ferries to Bidadi. All the parts arrive just-in-time to be assembled. Apart from delivering components, Transystems ferries built up vehicles to all of Toyotas dealers in the country. It picks spare parts from the vendors and send them off to the dealers and ferries imported knocked down kits from Chennai Port to the Bidadi plant.