The God of manufacturing

***** This article is about the Supplier development policies of Toyota and its implementation in Indian context.It's not about "Just in Time" production method.


It is said that God is always right.
You cannot question God ,because he is the ultimate truth.
I have been facing a similar situation since I joined my company.
Since the first day I have been hearing ....Toyota....Toyota....Toyota and in between it's Japan....Japan...Japan.
True that Toyota is the best automobile company of the world.Its the most efficient and profitable and a benchmark for the rest of the world to follow.

But is it right to assume that Toyota is the God of manufacturing and its policies will be successful in every region and situation of the world.
We underwent a training on supplier management and was told that Toyota indeed is the God.Any question which questioned the applicablity of Toyota policy was frowned upon by the Trainer.It was like we were children being taught what is right and what is wrong.


I hate this type of attitude. I hate those who try to shape my thoughts but refuse to discuss the issues openly.I didn't get the chance to discuss the applicabity of Toyota's supplier development policies in totallity in India in the training and I want to discuss it here.


The world always worships rising SUN.Few decades back it was the big three ie...GM,FORD and CHRYSLER who were the role models for the manufacturing.They were worshiped and imitated.They were arrogant and refused to change with time.Time got ahead of them and the result is for every body to see.

No theory or practice can be said to be the best for all times.They need to be changed with time to be in snyc with the current world.Otherwise they are doomed. Similarily,no theory or practice can be said to be applicable at every place in the same way.What has been successfull in Japan can be a sure shot success in India or US.Even in Japan ,what has been successful for Toyota may not bring same results for Honda or Nissan or Mazda.There is nothing absolute in this world.Every thing needs to be customized according to time and place.

Japan is a diffent type of place.It's society defies every conventional theory of interaction in a society.Honest to the core,hard working to the extreme and faithfull to an absurd limit......its citizens could be a role model for the world.And like Jews ,the Japanese have the sympathy of the whole world for being a victim of the nuclear bomb.In addition to this the Americans till now wanted to prevent the re-militrization of Japan at any cost.Even if it means giving it undue advantages in trade and commerce.The result was that in 1960's and 70's the Japanese would export every thing to America and Europe giving almost no duties.The Japanese govt subsidized every export oriented industry and the world looked the other way.
The Japanese govt have always promoted co-operation among its industries and the industries have welcomed the government interference happily.This is against the spirit of free market practise. Rest of world actively discourages the co-opeartion between big companies to prevent unfair trade practices.The companies too loathe the interfernce of govt in their activites.This has resulted in a huge advantage to the Japanese companies.Such a practice in any other part of the world will lead to the formation of cartels and result in trade manipulation.It will also lead to increased inefficiency in the companies because of govt interference.After all the companies work according to the market demands whereas govt woks on the public demand. I don't need to write about the Indian govt.Instead of economics they will try to enforce their agenda of social justice if given sufficient command over the industries.

The culture of Japan too suits the policies of Toyota.The Japanese are extremely loyal to their companies and the companies return the loyality by ensuring life time employment and many other benefits unheard of in our world.Lay offs are unheard of in japan.The electronic company Sony was in deep financial trouble but it has so far refrained from any worker lay offs.

The spirit of co-operation among the Japanese is praise worthy.They will extend helping hand to even their compititors who are in trouble.Honesty runs in their blood.Have u ever heard of a scam in Japan.The Japanese society is honest and they will do their job with full honesty.
Till now japanese have sold every thing to the world ,but they simply refuse to consume anything produced by others.This is the reality.An average Japanese will go for a costly and poor quality Japanese product rather than a cheap and high quality forign product.This irrationality in behaviour is because of nationalism which runs deep in their blood.
It is in this backdrop toyota has evolved its famed toyota manufacturing system.

Does that situation prevails in India.Only an insane person will say ..yes.
We are very different from Japan.Our mental state and physical infrastructure are completely different.Forget a life employment,our automotive companies throw out their line staff every six months to prevent IR issues.Forget co-operation between the vendors and OEMs.Here even ancilliary units and OEMs are suspicious of each other.Forget employee loyality,here the management and the labour unions behave as if they are enimies of each other.
Neither our company's scale of operation nor our govt policies are similar to Toyota and Japanese govt.

There could be two ways of bringing in the improvement in the companies.One could be by encouraging compitition among them.Tell every one fight it out in the market and the fittest will survive.The weak and the unfit will be out of the market sooner or latter.They will merge with the better performers or will be aquired by them.
The other way could be by co operation.Let the companies co operate and teach the weaker and inefficient ones how to improve.On principle its very egaliterian and right.But the sad truth is that nature has not made us to behave in such a way. Nature allows survival of the fittest only.Be it in the jungles or in the market.Any other policy deviaiting from it cannot be sustained in the long run.The communist realized it after 70 yrs of experimentation.

We have to choose which way we want to go.
Toyoyta's policy are good but a lot of deliberation needs to be done on the how to Indianize it.
Its implementation in the Japanese form is nothing but an invitation to trouble.