Taikoh Transportation – Factory Tour
Taikoh Transportation is a Toyota Group logistics company that delivers products to Toyota as well as other automakers such as Subaru, Suzuki and Yamaha. The company is the first company that established a procurement logistics system based on the Toyota Production System in Japan.
Corporate Information
- Company: Taikoh Transportation Co., Ltd.
- Foundation: 1943
- Location: Headquartered in Aichi Prefecture
- Main Business: Procurement transportation and logistics
Taikoh Transportation – Lean Characteristics
TPS-based Logistics
Taikoh Transportation is a logistics company that delivers products to Toyota, Subaru, Suzuki, Yamaha and many other customers’ final assembly operations. They cover Japan across 20 locations, but 13 of those are concentrated in the area of Aichi Prefecture. Their parent company is Toyota Industries Corporation – the original Toyota company that started in the textiles industry well before the automotive company was born.
In the Toyota Group, Taikoh Transportation and around four other logistics companies act as a staging mid-point between all of Toyota’s first-tier suppliers and their final assembly plants. The concept of the staging base was introduced in an effort to increase the frequency of deliveries to Toyota from their first-tier suppliers and thus decrease the inventory levels within each of the Toyota final assembly plants. This is part of Toyota’s kaizen approach spreading outside of production and into their logistics operations in an evolutionary step that still fully incorporates the Toyota Production System – including their kanban pull system of material and information flow.
A visit to Taikoh Transportation site showcases TPS applications at work in the field of transportation and logistics.
As I have had a previous unpleasant experience with lean training, I was worried about how much I could gain from this tour. At the end of this magnificent experience I can confirm that Shinka Management has exceeded my expectations. They are so organized, dedicated, helpful and generous. The tour was based on very-well known…
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Businesses need every weapon at their disposal to help compete in a global market. This tour opens up more ideas and opportunities and is highly recommended to manufacturers, engineering or service related industries. Everyone can learn something on this tour! Paul and Ben have done a marvelous job of putting together an action-packed week, which…
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The tour has given me the opportunity to understand in a practical way what I learned theoretically. I have checked that the theory is possible to put in practice. This has been the first time that I have felt the lean manufacturing philosophy first hand. Congratulations to the Shinka Team. The organisation has been perfect…
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I enjoyed every aspect of this extremely well organised kaizen tour including: factory visits, translations by Paul and Ben, TPS training, sightseeing, accommodation, transportation, and meals. This tour is a must for anyone trying to understand / implement LEAN into their business or organisation. I hope the tour continues for many years to come as…
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The whole tour was very professionally undertaken and led. Paul and Ben have to be congratulated for putting together a very informative and very enjoyable experience. The itinerary was excellent and to see from the raw material all the way through the supply chain through to the finished product was superb. I loved the thought…
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I attended the tour in 2011 and found the whole experience very useful to build on my understanding of Lean Manufacturing. For those having a reasonable understanding of Lean this tour shows in detail the gap that Australia experiences to world class productivity practices. Most interesting was the deployment of essentially the key elements of…
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The Shinka Management Lean Japan Tour is a professional development program run several times annually. The program includes a mix of lean and kaizen seminars, hands-on lean training and visits to several benchmark lean companies. For further information and program dates, see the lean tour overview page.
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