Operations Improvement Plan
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MBA6022
Strategic Operations Management
Address: XXXXXXXXXXXXx
E-mail: xxxxx
Instructor: Dr. Zhimin Huang
Abstract
This operation improvement plan is to help improve the internal communication process at Toyota between their employees and management. There has been a loss of ideas and knowledge, which is a complete violation of their founding principles defined in the Toyota Way. With the suggested recommendations, Toyota can once again reclaim its dominance in the world automobile market while at the same time improving their operational efficiency and quality.
Table of Contents
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Toyota’s Key Challenges
“Toyota’s information and decision making has been highly centralized. The result: Top management in Japan has been less sensitive to the expectations of regulators, culture and politics in overseas markets, and consequently, they have been slower to respond to local problems. The reality is that Toyota’s problems were not caused by a faulty production system but by poor management decisions” (Cole, 2011, pg. 34). In the past, Toyota was a company that trained employees to embrace the Toyota Way and pushed their employees to strive for continuous improvement and perfection. The upper management at Toyota has strayed away from their core; founding principles that empowered their employees and contributed to making them a successful automobile manufacturing juggernaut. A major source for of their ongoing improvement and innovation has been from employees.
An analysis has been done for Toyota’s management team, Appendix A, E and F, to show the root causes and how these root causes affect the internal communication process of ideas, concerns and knowledge between Toyota’s upper management and its foreign-based employees. To summarize the problem into a statement: “The Toyota Way and TPS places heavy emphasis teamwork, employee empowerment and striving for continual improvement and perfection. To ensure these principles are always understood and embraced, Toyota’s management needs to be committed to making sure
Cole, R. E. (2011). What really happened to Toyota? MIT Sloan Management Review, 52(4), 29-35. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.library.capella.edu/docview/875531966?accountid=27965
Some advantages of the self-administered survey are: Low cost. Extensive training is not required to administer the survey. Processing and analysis are usually simpler and cheaper than for other methods. The reduction in bias error. The questionnaire reduces the bias that might result from personal characteristics of interviewers and/or their interviewing skills. Greater anonymity, absence of an interviewer provides greater anonymity for the respondent. This is especially helpful when the survey deals with sensitive issues such as questions about involvement in a gang, because respondents are more likely to respond to sensitive questions when they are not face to face with an interviewer.
Toyota was thought to be the best quality car in the 1970s and 1980s but, due to Japanese competition, American car manufactures soon began to close the rankings gap. At the top of their game in 2010, Toyota had to stop manufacturing and order a large recall of automobiles. While leadership was probably considered great at the height of Toyota’s success, changes were obviously needed during the recall period and management needed to be as adaptable to those changing conditions. The only thing regarded as permanent in a market economy is change
TOYOTA PRODUCTION SYSTEM (TPS) The TPS model depends on its Human Infrastructure. The entire model is base on its PEOPLE & TEAMWORK being successful in doing their job and there buy in to the Key Elements of the TPS culture, which are as follows; Selection Ringi decision making Common Goals Cross-Trained TPS emphasize the point of its human infrastructure as a “COMMON GOAL” for all personnel in the corporation, which again is emphasize that its employees are its greatest assets as shown by the
* Salary is low and there are no benefits – no weekend rates, no holiday rates. Workers have to pay for their food on their break.
After a quality improvement issue has been identified, a quality improvement plan (QIP) needs to be developed to address the issue. Once deciding upon what will be measured and what indicators will determine success, strategies must be identified, developed and implemented to improve performance (Sadeghi, Barzi, Mikhail & Shabot, 2013). The purpose of this paper is to describe the strategy that will be implemented to address rates of worsened pain in the Veterans Centre (VC) and to create a process map that outlines how pain is currently assessed and managed in the VC (Appendix 1).
Since the Institute of Medicine’s widespread reports, To Err Is Human (2000) and Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001), revealed widespread incidence of medical errors in U.S. hospitals, there has been a great deal of effort to measure and improve the quality of hospital care. Progressive input has been made in establishing quality indicators and risk adjustment components to compare quality across organizations, and in analyzing processes and cultures in high-performing hospitals. There is a vast amount of knowledge to learn about the infrastructure of hospital performance. Health care organizations performance measures may include which hospitals are
“We will find our baseline measurement using nurse surveys, audits and observation timings. We will track what steps are covered and how long each step takes and the number of occurrences of near misses due to inefficient handoffs relating to patient safety. We will also measure our patient baseline data from current patient satisfaction surveys” N. Guyse (personal communication, February 22, 2014). Currently we are inefficient and unsafe with handoff practices due to missing or incomplete information, multiple processes used between the nursing staff, and multiple report out processes being practiced on the floor. Multiple processes are causing confusion and incidental overtime. With multiple processes, information is being missed between nursing staff, which is a safety concern due to the increased errors. Our organization is working on the creation of one standardized process used between all employees to ensure that all handoffs are efficient and safe. “We have implemented a group report out for nursing staff in conjunction with the beside report outs” N. Guyse (personal communication, February 22, 2014).
1. What is the relationship between Toyota’s organizational strategy and Toyota Production System? TPS is viewed as the benchmark, the
Comparison and Contrast of General Motors and Toyota Motor Thomas Hong, Ph.D. The Impact of Technology on Organization University of Phoenix November 12, 2007
Along with other Japanese manufacturers, Nissan was successfully competing on quality, reliability and fuel efficiency. By 1991, Nissan was operating very profitably, producing four of the top ten cars in the world.Nissan management throughout the 1990s, however, had displayed a tendency to emphasize short term market share growth, rather than profitability or long-term strategic success. Nissan was very well known for its advanced engineering and technology, plant productivity, and quality management. During the previous decade, Nissan’s designs had not reflected customer opinion because they assumed that most customers preferred to buy good quality cars rather than stylish, innovative cars. Instead of reinvesting in new product designs as other competitors did, Nissan managers seemed content to continue to harvest the success of proven designs. They tended to put retained earnings into equity of other companies, often suppliers, and into real-estate investments, as part of the Japanese business custom of keiretsu investing. Through these equity stakes in other companies, Ghosn’s predecessors (and Japanese business leaders in general) believed that loyalty and cooperation were fostered between members of the value chain within their keiretsu.
employee. This is part of day to day management and is intended to ensure that
Toyota is a key player in global automotive market. Its structure constitutes if various production plants in different locations and a very strong branding which helps it capture a major market share. Like other enterprises, Toyota has several strengths and weakness which makes it what it is now. Toyota heavily invests in Research and development which helps it come up reputable product line which is spread out throughout the world because of its strengthening global distribution network however its recent product recalling, loose grip in key geographic areas and wrong allocation of resources shows that even a strong brand like Toyota has its weaknesses.
Also they focus on maintenance department of operations where customer can cal staff to leave a complaints where staff must hire and listen carefully to every point by the customers so they should answer clearly and patient to service them and solve their problem. We mention that Toyota is a learning culture so Toyota gives it is employee training in how to communicate with customers and help
The ideology of kaizen is an essential part of the Toyota and Toyota Production system since kaizen means there is no process is perfect and understands that there is always room for improvement, a thought that resonates within Toyota. The team members of the organization are aware of their roles within the kaizen guidelines and the responsibility each one of them has discovering new ways of improving the operation