Friday, April 12, 2013

Toyota's next frontiers .. energy and sustainability ..

It was surprising to read about the present Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda's targets for Toyota Japanese plants this year. Given that Japanese plants of Toyota produce about 45% of the total 8.5 million cars produced last year , this is a real challenging target given the production pressures at these plants

The energy consumption will be reduced by 20% or in other words, energy efficiency will be increased by 20%. The CO2 emissions will be reduced by 30%...

These are challenging targets and given the Toyota penchant for meeting impossible targets consistently one after the other, this is just a challenge given to the employees to see that they have enough zeal to work and give their best on the shopfloor. 

Given Toyota's tough targets on quality, productivity and maintenance, this is a Godsend for them to give the needed challenge to their employees.

There is no doubt that the systematic collective approach to team efforts co-ordinated with lean methodologies in case of quality, productivity and maintenance will now reflect itself in the areas of energy efficiency and green measures and be accepted as annexures to the existing knowledge on lean methodologies on how can companies go lean on energy usage and remain sustainable at the same time ..

When in the class students used to ask why Toyota is only concerned about its internal production volumes, costs and productivity targets of employees and why it is not concerned about Energy, the environment and atmosphere, as Professors we ran short of words. But now with the new announcement Toyota has once again shown that it is not out of sync with reality and would try its level best to increase energy efficiency and match upto the best green companies in the world.. .

ge..

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