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Calculated Risk
Depending on a single source and holding essentially no inventory is a
calculated risk, concedes Kiyoshi Kinoshita, Toyota's general manager of
production control. But it also is what keeps Toyota's production lean; Aisin
gets major economies of scale that it passes on to Toyota in lower prices.
Toyota acknowledges that it didn't figure in the risk of fire. Aisin executives
speculate that sparks from a broken drill bit may have ignited wooden
platforms. Just after 4 that morning, flames swept through an air duct and
ignited the roof. Graveyard-shift workers escaped as 36 fire engines arrived,
mostly from nearby Toyota-group companies.
Even as the fire burned, Aisin officials organized a committee to assess
the damage, notify customers and labor unions and, following Japanese
custom, visit neighbors to apologize. A subcommittee ordered 320
cellular phones, 230 extra phone lines and several dozen sleeping bags
for executives who were expected to live at headquarters in the coming
days.
At 8 a.m., Aisin asked Toyota to help. Kosuke Ikebuchi, a Toyota senior
managing director, was tracked down at a golf-course clubhouse; he left his
wife there and rushed to Toyota headquarters to help set up a "war room" to
direct the damage-control operation. Toyota quickly sent more than 400
engineers to Aisin. In reacting to such a crisis, Mr. Kinoshita says, "we're like
the U.S. military."
When the last embers died just before 9 a.m., the damage at Factory No. 1
began to grow clear -- along with an apparent Achilles' heel in Toyota's lean
corporate physique. Most of the factory's 506 highly specialized machines,
which make other brake parts as well as P-valves, were charred and useless.
Toyota estimated that more than two weeks would be needed just to restore a
few milling machines to partial production, and six months to order new
machines. That was too long: Auto plants were on overdrive to meet strong
domestic demand and serve the brisk-selling U.S. market.
Moreover, a Toyota shutdown would damage local economies. Firms
supplying the 20,000 parts in the average Toyota, along with hundreds of
businesses such as utilities and trucking companies, would be hurt without
Toyota orders. Each day Toyota is down, a state agency calculates, cuts
Japan's annual industrial output by 0.1 percentage point.