Question

Product : engine company: Toyota (1) Identify one or more production strategies applied by the firm currently and provide your opinions on whether you agree with their production strategies. Provide improvement suggestions (if any). Hint: there are four production strategies. • Make-to-Stock • Assemble-to-Order . Make-to-Order • Engineer-to-Order (2) Identify how the firm's production facility is arranged. Do you think the firm has an effective facility layout? Use reasons to support your answer. Hint: there are five basic structures. Project layout • Work center layout Manufacturing cell layout • Assembly line . Continuous process

Answer 1

Question 1

Make-to -Order is one of the important production strategies adopted by Toyota for manufacturing engines. It helps the company in eliminating costs associated with excess production and unwanted warehousing of the manufacturing of engines. The Make-to-Order system facilitates the company in manufacturing engines on the basis of the market demand or order rather than the production capacity of the plants. It helps the company in saving money in terms of machinery maintenance costs.It also saves a lot of time and provides fresh engines to the customers. wastage of materiel can also be reduced by depending on this strategy.

Suggestions for improvement of the Make-to-Order production strategy.

One of the defects of Make-to-Order is that the company will not have any ready supply of engines in the warehouse which may influence some of the potential sales. Sometimes the Make-to-Order strategy may take more time to fill and process customer orders which may force customers to go for other manufacturers. Delays in this regard may also affect the cash flow of the company. So the production process and order filling needs to be a bit faster so that the delivery of engines can be done in a speedy manner. Another problem associated with this is the cost of customization. So the company must try to control the cost of the manufacturing of engines in all possible ways.

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