Tmmc assessment answers

In this assignment, student teams prepare a report to demonstrate their acquired knowledge of the Toyota Production System and of Toyota Motor Company's North American regional production strategy.

A real-world case study underpins one-half of the assignment.

Assignment

Address as a team the following four exercises due the last day of this week in the group assignment folder.

Exercise 1: Making a Critical Assessment of the Toyota Production System (TPS) Today

Demonstrate your team's basic understanding of the TPS by Defining in your team's own words any eight of the terms found at http://www.toyotageorgetown.com/terms.asp, and
Applying them to one or more of your team's own companies or other organizations.
For example, Pokayoke is an approach to avoid production mistakes through use of devices or processes that detect or prevent errors. At a software development firm, Pokayoke might be applied through use of a modular development process that includes extensive software module testing before proceeding to module integration and then total system testing

Describe the TPS as a total entity. What are its purposes? Its advantages? Its limitations? How is it now evolving? Is it getting better or not? Has it been successfully copied by other motor vehicle manufacturers, fully or partially? Why or why not?
Include an executive summary.
Exercise 2: Use of Grid Analysis (Weighted Scoring) to Help Make the North American Plant Location Decision for the RX 330

This exercise illustrates how when deciding among two or more competing plant location options, various decision factors (which can typically be characterized as exogenous - in the environment external to the company, hence largely outside its control – or as endogenous - internal to the company, therefore largely under its control) can be qualitatively identified, and how these factors can then be scored, weighted, and summed to obtain an overall score for each competing location option.