Toyota visit and the Evolution timeline theme park ..

Along with students we visited the Toyota plant on 8th Sept, 2022. This visit was very special, for the first time I visited with students from sem 3 and sem 4, the Ecozone in the Toyota Kirloskar 432 acre green campus Bidadi. 

After reaching the campus at 8.30 AM and a small breakfast, we were taken to the Toyota Technical Training Institute, where the student trainees were having their morning assembly, Rajio Taiso. It was interesting to note that Toyota trainees were getting international honours in the World Skills competition and even for the recent skills competition in 2022 May in Switzerland, Toyota Bidadi had clinched honours.

After the TTTI visit we were taken to the Toyota Plaza and Ecozone where 17 ecological based theme parks are opened for the public, ranging from evergreen forests, Underground Ecology, wet pavilion, energy, Biodiversity, Medicinal garden, pollination meadow, rainwater pond, solar parks, organic farms, climate change and sacred groves theme parks.

What was surprising to me was the Open Earth Evolution Timeline theme park which took me through an open area having five arches stepping across 440 million years of the earth's evolutionary history separated by the five events of mass extinctions. This is very unique in the sense no other organisation in the world has an open  park based on this theme that concerns the whole of humanity. Besides what surprised me was to see the vegetation that existed at that time was identified and was specially grown through gene therapy or so and was planted on the left side of the pathway in the order of the great mass extinctions that have been studied.

• Ordovician-silurian Extinction: 440 million years ago.
• Devonian Extinction: 365 million years ago.
• Permian-triassic Extinction: 250 million years ago.
• Triassic-jurassic Extinction: 210 million years ago.
• Cretaceous-tertiary Extinction: 65 Million Years Ago. (wikipedia.org)

On the left side you see the vegetation during the period of the timeline

I have to specially thank Toyota management for taking the pains of organising such a great park of massive anthropological significance and enabling visitor walk-through through this partial evolution timeline of our earth. (440 million years of the 4560 million years of earth existence).

The experience was a stunning one. In one shot, I was taken back 440 million years in our evolution history all the way to the last 60 million years and to the present day.  What was mesmerising and surprising is being told that I could see the growth of multicellular vegetation that existed during that time on planet earth now in the Toyota Bidadi ecozone. I could not believe my eyes.

A most unique opportunity in the world. Nowhere in the world in the open you have such a theme park with some of the plants, moss and other fauna that existed during that ancient time, millions of years back, growing on the land and in water. I am really surprised to hear that this open evolution theme park is the first of its kind in India and also possibly in the world. This requires a great amount of study, planning and execution. I am sure that this would be Toyota's pride offering to any international guest that comes to this plant of Toyota.

Let me reassert that offering such a park is beyond one's imagination and reach, Toyota management needs to be specially applauded for thinking out of the box and maintaining this theme park for the present day earthlings, who have appeared just in the last one million years of the earth's 4560 million years of evolution. In this real-life 3D spatial representation of the timeline spread over a distance of about 50 metres (a time span of 440 million years), the human evolution happens only in the last 10 cms or so. 

We are unable to post pictures as we were not permitted to take pictures within the Toyota campus. Being interested in the earth's evolutionary history and anthropology, this experience was mesmerising,  bewitching, enchanting, out of this world and beyond words .. 

Thank you very much Toyota Kirloskar Motors. When almost 30MW of power, 100%, for the plant is generated renewable basis from solar power and 95% of he water requirements are met through rain water harvesting and recycling, it speaks volumes of Toyota's commitment to the environment and it's integrity and credibility as an environmental sustainability leader.

We were taken to the safety department where training was given to the students on the different aspects of motor safety. The visit also saw the students playing the Just in Time simulation game in the training area in 2 sessions. The first session involved a game where a natural setup without JIT operations was conducted. In the afternoon, the game was repeated with JIT controlled processes and the students were able to understand how JIT approach improves quality and vehicle output from the assembly line by almost 4x. 

We left the campus by 4.PM and reached Uty campus by almost 7 PM. A repeat  visit was promised by Toyota to the Toyota shopfloor as presently the shopfloor was out of reach for the public due to release of a Toyota EV by December 2022. 

We could see Toyota's commitment to quality, standardisation, personal well being, health and the preservation of environment and natural resources. This is what makes Toyota different from the crowd. 

George.