COMM 491 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Runs Created, Bes, Tral
Document Summary
Toyota in 2009: the origin and evolution of the world"s leading automobile. Comm 491 (104); abigail yan yi lum (71159140) Compare and contrast toyota"s manufacturing system with a conventional mass-production system. The conventional mass-production systems works on the assumption that producing a limited product line in massive quantities will allow the firm to take advantage of economies of scale. This is achieved by spreading the fixed costs associated with setting up the equipment required for stamping over large volumes of production. As such, many parts were first produced, then stored as inventory until they were needed in the assembly process. This idea of long production runs created large inventories and resulted in a large number of defects. In addition, each assembly worker only performed a singular task as it was believed that this would familiarize each worker with his or her assigned task and increase labor productivity.
