Justin Lo 57722134

COMM 493 101 Individual Assignment 1

Professor Larry Wosk
10/5/2016

Compare and contrast Toyotas manufacturing system with a conventional mass-production system.

The mass-production system that is widely adopted by American automobile manufacturers states that

by producing a limited product line in massive quantities, the firm itself gains maximum economies of

scale due to the spread of fixed cost. Workers are to only perform a single task in the production line, just

so they can master the techniques of performing the task and hence increasing labour productivity. In

contrast, Toyota has adopted a lean manufacturing, Just-In-Time production model after noticing the

downfalls that are associated with the mass-production system- massive inventory cost, large number of

defects, and the inability to accommodate to consumer preferences due to the limited product diversity.

Toyota reduced the time it took to set up the machines for stamping out body parts, this allowed them to

manufacture the auto-body parts in small batches instead of large quantities. It also eliminated the idle

time that was previously existed. Making small batches has enabled Toyota to keep their inventories level

low, minimizing cost by lowering warehousing costs, freeing up scarce capital for investment. Toyota also

imposed the team concept onto its workers, when a problem occurs in production line, it was the whole

teams effort to work on resolving the problem, to trace back to the ultimate cause of the issue and to

ensure that the same issues do not happen again in the future. Toyota has put a great emphasise on

improving quality, they used Total Quality Management, they set up Quality Circles to discuss ways to

improve the production process and had a focus on continuous process improvement. Workers are also

happier in the lean production system as assembly workers tasks are not as focused and mundane as in

the mass-production system and lead to increased worker productivity. Overall, quality of product has

increased and the defect rate has lowered significantly as well.