TOYOTA CITY, Japan - At factories in Japan's industrial heartland, Toyota has turned to self-propelled assembly lines, massive die casting and even old-fashioned hand polishing as it aims to make up for lost ground in battery electric vehicles.
Elsewhere, three-decade-old equipment used to process parts can now be run at night and on weekends after being automated through robotics and 3D modeling, improvements Toyota said had trebled equipment productivity. Toyota revolutionised modern manufacturing with its system of lean production, just-in-time delivery and "kanban" workflow organisation. Its methods have since been adopted everywhere from hospitals to software firms and studied widely in business schools and boardrooms around the world.
It is not the only car company grappling with the challenges from shifting to EVs. Detroit's Big Three automakers have cited competitive pressure from Tesla as they push back against wage demands from the United Auto Workers union that last week led to an unprecedented simultaneous strike.One innovation being emphasised by Toyota is its self-propelled production lines, where EVs are guided by sensors through the assembly line.
Like Tesla, Toyota says it will produce EVs in modular sections, reducing parts. But it also points to innovations of its own. Since it has been working with die-casting for years, it has developed molds that can be quickly replaced, which is periodically necessary in gigacasting.
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Source: globebusiness - 🏆 31. / 66 Read more »