Toyota Motor Corp. has said that it will significantly increase the versatility of parts of its models. To protect the driver’s knee airbags, for example, 50 different models are currently required, and the next 10 are sufficient.
Part type data reduction
According to Bloomberg, one of Toyota's most significant operations since 2009 was to reduce the number of parts and promote the use of universal parts across the vehicle model. To this end, Toyota launched the TGNA (Toyota New Global Architecture) strategy in 2012, and the platform models will use a large number of general-purpose parts; the initial general ratio is 20% to 30%, and eventually it will reach 70% to 80%.
Toyota plans to launch a new car on the TGNA platform in 2015, but no details have been given so far. Credit Suisse Bank predicts that the first car released on the new platform in 2015 will be the Prius, but Toyota has not confirmed this.
According to data obtained by Bloomberg, in the 2012 fiscal year, Toyota spent more than 9.6 billion U.S. dollars on automotive research and development, and the commonality of parts and components was among the investment priorities. However, Toyota did not disclose the amount of investment in the TGNA strategy.
In the past, Toyota needed to build different parts based on different models. Since the shape of the seats of each vehicle differs from each other, 50 types of kneepad airbags are required. However, through the standardization of HipHeights, Toyota said that it would be possible to reduce the number of kneepad airbags by 80% and only 10 in the future.
In addition to airbags, the number of other component models will also be reduced due to improvements in generality. Shinichi Sasaki, Toyota's global purchasing director, disclosed that last year Toyota reduced the number of radiator types needed from 100 to 21 models. On June 4, Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun reported that the number of Toyota cylinders will be reduced from 18 to 6 in 2016.
Profitable components giant
Bloomberg said that Toyota's initiative to improve the versatility of parts will benefit the giants such as Johnson Controls, Bosch, TRW and Denso, enabling these large parts manufacturers to take orders from the smaller Japanese parts manufacturers. . Among the above-mentioned parts and components companies, the company holds 31% of the shares owned by Toyota and is Toyota's largest supplier.
Credit Suisse analyst Masahiro Akita said that “parts generalization†means more opportunities for large-scale suppliers around the world due to the global distribution of spare parts giants with greater production capacity and better design capabilities. "And Toyota will also get a wider access to parts and components to improve the supply chain's ability to respond to risks.
In March 2011, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan caused disruptions to the supply chain of Japanese automakers. Toyota was forced to reflect on the complexity of its supply system and decided to reduce the number of suppliers, subcontractors and subcontractors Reliance on personalized parts. Toyota spokesman Dion Corbett said that the earthquake: "causes us to carefully examine the supply chain and look for weaknesses and areas that need repair."
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