Do You Actually Believe Toyota??

Retooling a line is no simple matter. I believe they did a hard shut down and idled the workforce and stopped suppliers from delivering their products. Toyota, Honda and others have some incredible engineering. I have friends at GM (designers/engineers) and when you hear them talk about the projects they do you realize there is a ton of brain power behind each car. These people (female and male engineers) are a dedicated bunch. Where it probably gets screwed up is in marketing and accounting (so true of life in general).

If they’ve shut down any assembly lines, then it is true. Shutting down an assembly line or bottleneck workcenter is the equivalent of shutting down that line’s portion of the factory’s direct and indirect costs. I doubt they did that though. Originally Posted by OliviaHoward

I buy Toyota fleet units for my company and have had two delays on future replacement vehicles due to Gulf States Toyota telling me that a plant was shut down that they normally provided my fleet from, since then I have only received two units out of five units requested this year so far, I was told to expect a delay of 5 to 6 months due to the shut down of the plant.

Of the 36 units in operations, only two have been recalled and only one was required to have a gas pedal replaced, did this brother me, hell no, too many positives out weight the one recall. FYI... the recall on the pedal was to shorten the length of the foot pad so if some dumb ass was stupid enough to put two floor mats together on top of each other that the pedal would not stick in the down position. But with the stupidness of "some" people I guess you have to take measures to handle such. (Keyword is "some")

Woody, Gulf States is one of only two independent distributors of Toyotas (the other is Southeast Toyota owned by the Moran family). Toyota (TMS = Toyota Motor Sales USA) has bought out most of the others to have better control of their products. Gulf States and Southeast would offer "special" packages on Toyotas that did exist elsewhere in the country. And would charge a bit more for an identical car than one in another region. Very profitable for the indies. Those regions still place orders to TMS who then distributes the vehicles or orders the build (special builds were and probably still are fairly rare, and example would be a Turbo MR-2 without T-Tops. Almost all of them had T-tops). Esoteric enough for everyone?

Retooling a line is no simple matter. I believe they did a hard shut down and idled the workforce and stopped suppliers from delivering their products. Toyota, Honda and others have some incredible engineering. I have friends at GM (designers/engineers) and when you hear them talk about the projects they do you realize there is a ton of brain power behind each car. These people (female and male engineers) are a dedicated bunch. Where it probably gets screwed up is in marketing and accounting (so true of life in general). Originally Posted by SR Only

Tearing down and tooling up a line is very expensive, but it isn’t as expensive as shutting a line / plant down. I’m APICS certified and manufacturing is my passion. Many of the APICS courses are based on Elijah Toyota’s manufacturing, engineering, quality and supply chain techniques. In fact, I would say it is the philosophy behind the certification. If Woody is right, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, taking a plant off line would be millions and millions of dollars a day. Wow. Still it’s amazing it happened in a Toyota plant.

But I think a hard shut down and the ramp up when the solution comes around is cheaper than a retool. Just be no product being sold nor built was VERY expensive. I doubt that any of the other majors would do that.

hey there are a bunch of cars and trucks at my local dealer. Betcha they'd sell 'em.

Not that this is a surprise, Olivia IS smarter than me. But then again there's a bunch of you in D&T land smarter than me.

But then again there's a bunch of you in D&T land smarter than me. Originally Posted by SR Only

You give us too much credit.

But I think a hard shut down and the ramp up when the solution comes around is cheaper than a retool. Just be no product being sold nor built was VERY expensive. I doubt that any of the other majors would do that.

hey there are a bunch of cars and trucks at my local dealer. Betcha they'd sell 'em.

Not that this is a surprise, Olivia IS smarter than me. But then again there's a bunch of you in D&T land smarter than me. Originally Posted by SR Only

I don't know, it just depends on what product they retool for.

What does D & T stand for?

What does D & T stand for? Originally Posted by OliviaHoward

I got it y'all! I know this one!
Olivia, D&T is the forum that you are posting in.

Toyota, since they invented JIT manufacturing Originally Posted by OliviaHoward

I’m APICS certified Originally Posted by OliviaHoward

JIT???
APICS???

JIT = just in time

Woody, Gulf States is one of only two independent distributors of Toyotas (the other is Southeast Toyota owned by the Moran family). Toyota (TMS = Toyota Motor Sales USA) has bought out most of the others to have better control of their products. Gulf States and Southeast would offer "special" packages on Toyotas that did exist elsewhere in the country. And would charge a bit more for an identical car than one in another region. Very profitable for the indies. Those regions still place orders to TMS who then distributes the vehicles or orders the build (special builds were and probably still are fairly rare, and example would be a Turbo MR-2 without T-Tops. Almost all of them had T-tops). Esoteric enough for everyone? Originally Posted by SR Only

Thanks SR for your input..... I am sure that many out there have no idea that there were several indies before Toyota really made a push here, much less the reason why, but thats in-material to those in the general public. I appreciate your data provided, thanks

D&T:
Diamonds and Tuxedos
Dicks and Tits
Dilithium and Tribbles
Dallas and Texarkana
Detroit and Toronto
Dunk and Travel
Devour and Taste
Diablo and Testarossa

Who's got the next additions?

So what, GM stated they paid the TARP money back to the government.

It just depends on how the company wants to spin it. Originally Posted by pyramider

That's not what GM said. It's a good example of spindoctoring that you think that's what they said.

They loaned GM $7 billion. That's what got paid back. They also gave GM $43 billion in exchange for stock as part of the bankruptcy. There was also an illegal transfer of part ownership of the company to the UAW.

The numbers may not quite be right. There's been a lot of spindoctoring and outright fraud in the reporting of details of these bailouts.

I have no research to back-up what I'm getting ready to say... but...

Has anyone else noticed how the news has turned against Toyota ever since the US Gov't took over GM and essentially, became a competitor?

Isn't that queer..... hmmmm...

Giz

Chicago politics?