hi everyone it's David from autot press guess what you got to follow me because I am standing right in front of the Tara Factory tahara plant in ic prefecture in Japan yes I'm finally here I have been here before of course but to be able to come to this plant at this point in my uh life is so so critical and so so exciting because this is where all of the cars I love are produced not just the new 4Runner but also the Land Cruiser 250 series Lexus GX but also most of other Lexus lineup
some of which I've purchased before uh that includes the Lexus IS as you guys know I bought is500 previously but also the ls the NX they're all produced here and they also have some other special um entry now including the Toyota Century SUV that has just been added to this uh Factory as well uh so Century SUV not the century sedan but the century SUV is also produced in Tara Factory uh but the century sedan is still produced in the other Factory which is a moto MAA plant where I did a factory review earlier in
the year and also they've added the Lexus LM which is not sold in North America that's a luxury upscale van uh that it cost almost $200,000 depending on the model you buy so we are at the entrance of tahara plant and they have some of the products that they produce right here we have the Land Cruiser 250 series uh this is Iconic name PL played back in North America we're very happy about that we have the original uh Lexus LS or what they used to call the TOA celier that was a name they use in
Japan this was also produced in tahara Factory we have the new current model Lexus LS and as I mentioned the Lexus LM special luxury van which is an OBS amazing vehicle with a huge screen in the back right here and basically first class cabin style design just like in aircraft so this is the beginning of a Tara plant I've got so much to show you I'm going to talk about the tahara as a a background history and some background information take you right into the factory but also have whole bunch of other things to do
with the Tara plant I want to show you some technology and advancements in manufacturing well I don't know where to start but and let me take you right into plant as if you are with me right here in Japan let's go okay so we just started the plant tour here in tahara very excited to be here and I'm going to do this pretty casual format follow with us and there will be a lot of stuff uh in terms of uh information to share with you so stick with me okay so there is some PL uh
Parts uh distribution and parts delivery here some are done by an actual person but some are done by uh an automated guided vehicle which is called AGB so you'll see that as well but I just want you to see how clean the plant is and it's like you can literally eat off the floor because it's so so clean and uh because it's Lexus you know you can tell the whole atmosphere is different but that uh image of a car and the world the globe is made with the Lexus uh employee or tahar employee face it's
like a mosaic artwork and we have a ag again AG stands for automated guided V so it moves by itself there's no one guiding it it runs based on computer programming and it's programmed to move and to carry Parts over to uh different parts of the plant and some are bigger some are really small these are all built inhouse pretty well and it's just amazing how the world of manufacturing have changed because par delivery is done by robotics basically these a automated miniature robot they're more coming over there they're also carrying some windows over there
really cool place they're really big on trying to make this plant carbon neutral plant so there's a lot of focused on re renewable energy a huge turbine wind turbine outside and that's all part of the plan to try to make this plant one of the most environmentally friendly plants in the world and but now we can begin to see some of the cars as well so um again the very very long Corridor all the way through and you'll see the car over there that's Lexus uh NX on the line looks like but I will explain
to you more detail as we move along here so okay so let's take a some interesting thing here we have mixed model manufacturing so at Toyota and Lexus they don't produce the same model over and over again in the same line they mix the model based on actual demand so you can see for example we have the ls the NX uh bunch of other models all being produced on the same line different color different features some of these are going to North America some are going somewhere somewhere else again only toota can do such a
great job of mix modeling and not make any mistakes and these are all parts distribution here so the parts are arriving here and then these racks or what we call the gravity feed so the parts goes on top they take the parts when the box is empty it comes back this way and then the um a variety of different uh small forklifts will pick them up and so there's so much to see you can also see a whole bunch of panels on top I'll show you a little bit when I'm closer to that so they
come and follow me so once again you can see the LM being produced over there okay followed by it looks like a look look like LS over there so lots of different models all being produced on the same line so we always have to look left and right side before we cross over and this is a little rest area so the production workers when they want to take a break uh during the designated breake time they'll sit over here and they have their own little lockers and they discuss ways to improve the line or improve
the product so there are more parts here we we're basically walking to another part of manufacturing so we're just uh kind of passing through passing by this area okay so now what we're going to show you is the installation of the seat for the luxury minivan or van for the Lexus LM each of these seats these are like almost like a massage chair literally speaking and they weigh 42 kg each so that's what almost 100 lb each so they're going to show how that goes into that LM very shortly we moving along here on a
moving conveyor belt and then uh we'll see when the LM reaches this point they have a special equipment here to install the seat so we'll take a look at that in the meantime I want to point out once again we got a flowing line you can see the parts are in front of the car so all the parts that you need are actually lying right with the vehicle the car is moving in what we call the nagar style which is the flow line so I'm allowed to go uh walk into the which is so cool
and uh we're going to be able to see the actual installation of the seat so cool and look at the uh station workstation here look right here look at all the parts are so clearly labeled this is what we call the shadow board everything is colored color coded so yellow yellow yellow yellow this belongs to this station here and everything is actually organized and designed by the production workers and this is what we call the five b system which is a part of Lan manufacturing terminology but this van is going to come so you can
see the van right here and then uh then we're going to see this seat over here okay so we're just about they're getting ready to install the seats over here so he's getting the all the harnesses ready to go again uh Lexus LM special seat and then on some of the Lexus LM models they have a special partition that goes in the middle so depends on which model the uh different type of Parts goes into the plant uh but when that one reaches the seat still station a will actually be installed so really really cool
so he's getting ready for that so we can uh point over there so he's using a special equipment to pick up this uh seat remember one seat is 40 2 or 43 kg so almost 100 lb about 200 lb that's being lifted by this a special equipment uh no problem for the production worker because he's using this equipment he doesn't feel any weight okay and he's going to actually Slide the seats right into the van I can't go too close right now but he's going to bring it over here you can see this huge system
and he's going to slide right in just incredible incredible design to simplify the ction make it ergonomic for the production workers but but also just efficient this whole thing is being done within a very short time so there the SE are being slide right in you can see the production worker is just effort effortless uh this is all been done in about less than less than 3 minutes of installation zero defect fits right in plug-and play and the equipment will actually move you can see the finger moving and rolling over here and then the he's
going to then pull the whole thing right up and it's finished basically so I think so he's going to pull them out right now it comes right out it's got kind of like a two fingers on it especially custom design equipment of course one more item comes out and then that's it the seats are actually in this will go back and they will pick up the next seat for the next LM and all of them are just in time sequenced by the seral number so that they don't put the wrong seat into the wrong car
right from the vendor but this would have been designed by the vendor everything is sequenced just in time and the seats arrive when you need the seats you're not there not sitting in the warehouse for days and days is probably no more than about uh 2 hours of inventory usually for these things and arrives at the um arrival area or pars delivery area and it's brought to Here by either uh a human uh driving the actual parts or the AG automatic guided vehicles and then it comes down here and it's installed by the production worker
so real cool also if you look carefully here you can see the wiring hardness and so forth is Lexus NX partially manufactured uh you can also see the line on the bottom here 1 2 3 4 5 these desonate kind of timing so they know how much time has passed uh so everything designed to make sure that all the work here is done efficiently without any mistakes and that if there's any problem you press the andone button to call for help uh which I am not going to do today because that's what I just did
at Moto but I'm going to ask him where the andon switch is yeah so I it's actually on the other side so we're not going to bring it over here but um it's wireless and the same style as the one I showed you guys before in the Moto plant with the yellow and the red button yellow call for help red is a stop the line so in case you didn't know T time is what we call the heartbeat of a customer that's the demand that's how often the cars are being manufactured and being pulled by
the customer and this is one of the signature Toyota Lexus U manufacturing terminology and TCT time is perhaps the most important thing you have to know when you're designing a proper uh production plan so T time is again the rate at which the the products are being produced right here for the Lexus lineup is 175 seconds which means every 175 seconds the car comes off the assemblying line so if you look at the floor here this is the beginning of the tack line and if you walk with me all the way to here this is
the end of the line so between this line and the other line there it's exactly 175 seconds and so the production worker as they're working on the car they know if they were to pass that line then they're going to miss the attack time because you have to finish your work within 175 seconds and so as you're working on the product use think you might not meet the attack time deadline then they'll push the andone light ask for help and say look I'm not going to finish my work within 175 seconds someone please come and
help me so usually they'll push and ask for help maybe halfway through before it's too late and this kind of One Piece flow uh based on the T time based on the demand is really what sets the TOA production system apart from many other system because you can't cheat the system the time is there you you measure based on the floor you measure based on the clock and so everything has to flow and be produced exactly on the Rhythm in this case 175 seconds every time the car will come off the assemblying line The Only
Exception is special cars like Lexus LM has a slightly longer attack time so that particular uh model gets uh a bit of a a break in terms of not keeping within 175 seconds they go they're still kind of experimenting with the best way to manufacture that and so that one gets a a special attention but everything else has to stick with the 175 seconds back time so here's another interesting thing that's going on you hear a little bit of music right now that's almost ended and that signals the beginning of what we call the can
band distribution system um we call it loely water spider method and what it is that as you pick the part for installation on to a car you keep using it and the parts run out and then you signal camand basically a little piece of paper you pick to say that I'm out of parts I still got some reserved I need some new parts to arrive and what they'll do is a water spider person will go around pick up all the cound cars go to the distribution area or parts area pick up those parts and come
back and and distribute them back into the line and that whole process is when they put one of the music there to let people know the water spider person is going around collecting the part so not to worry you will not run out of parts and this is just a signal so there's many different kind of music they use in the coda plan but that's one of the music as well now what we're doing here is we're just waiting for um the another Lexus LM van to come because we're going to install the partition that
it separates the uh front driver to the rear passenger that partition is the most important one for the expensive version of the LM it's got a huge LCD panel and they're going to slide that into a very very thin slot with a very small amount of tolerance so we're going to do that now here a little another different sound that probably is asking for help so I see the andone screen and the yellow lamp just came on was probably hard to see so they're calling for help at station number 24 which is just over there
I think there some kind of help they need so they're asking for help thankfully it's not me that pressed the andom button for that uh but we have the LM coming up here so he's going to pick up this huge partition again very clever semi-automated equipment because he has to uh obviously still guide the product but the machine is designed to pick this part which is a very expensive part once he confirms it it's going to pick it up slide over this is a huge panel you can see the size of the LCD how big
it is and then we're going to follow the parts and we're going to uh see how this is going to be installed this is like a miracle of a manufacturing because can you imagine 20 30 years ago how would you have even stall this part it's too heavy to carry by a person and it's too difficult to install this with a Precision but now with the new technology we can we can make this work so uh we're just waiting for the van to move forward just a little bit more oh okay so the reason why
we're stopped is that you can see the red red one there the little red uh let me see right here you can see the little red so station number two has a a problem they push the red and on and so they're asking for help and this is one of the interesting thing about the Toyota production system is that uh most people think Toyota plants have never have never any issues well that's not true they always want to make adjustment and make things better so whenever they find something that has a little bit of problem
they'll push the hand on get help make sure everything is perfect and then L line continues on so that way no mistakes are ever carried from one station to the next that's a very important philosophy of Koda so Line's moving now it don't stop for very long it's just usually for a few seconds or so and uh we're just getting ready when this thing lines up the production worker that you see there will slide this thing right in so let's take a look at that he's just getting ready for the the LM is moving slowly
but surely and now he's ready to install so we can come a little bit closer and this slice right in look at that oh so cool oh wow okay okay okay so we're going to move away for a second look at the long arm there and ready to pick up the next part Isn't that cool that that Precision is so cool so again I'm in front of Lexus LM they just is putting some final touches to the huge screen that we have uh right now the 20% of the production at tahara in this particular line
is all Lexus LM so it's almost $200,000 for the most expensive LM but you know what is flying off the shelves according to them and it's one of a kind that's for sure okay let's keep on going here guys oh actually let's take a look at this person picking and dropping off Parts he drops one part the slide along here picks another part these are all coming from vendors and then uh he has maybe a couple of other ones to drop off on this side so you'll see a lot of the parts distribution is still
done by hand Toyota and Lexus because it's actually the most efficient way they don't have to automate everything he's going to he's going to move over now okay so now back to the andong screen we're going to come over here for a second so again this is basically the layout of this particular line when everything is green then it's actually all good to go if one of them turns yellow that mean they they're calling for help but the line hasn't stopped and if it's emergency or safety issues then they'll press a red button and it'll
turn red and you know what he said every day there's more than 100 incidents or 100 times when they press the yellow button or sometime red button because they're constantly making adjustments to make sure that everything is perfect and no mistakes are being passed on to the next line and this is one of the most misunderstood part of to production system is that they definitely do stop the line they definitely do call for help because sometime the parts don't fit quite right or um the production workers they need some help maybe they're not feeling well
and what they're saying is don't let the problems go through to next system call for help get help so that we can make a perfect car and that philosophy is very different from North American or Western manufacturing method where they just let the mistakes pass through the system and they try to fix it at the end of the line here they fix it all the way through so that when the car is complete is perfect with no error so he explained to me that uh one of the reasons why to production system uh is focused
on allowing people to push the button and ask for help is because if there's a station where they seems to have more problems than than other stations where they're constantly asking for help then they know that's where they have to improve next time because maybe it's a bottleneck maybe there's a problem with a system or equipment or with a person that's working there maybe needs some help and need some training so they don't want to discourage people for uh getting help they want to encourage people to stop the line or to at least ask for
help with the andon and that way they can give the most attention there and focus on improving it because all it's all about improving they don't want to hide anything they want to make sure everything very crystal clear so we're just going to walk through the final uh section of the assembly I'll do a proper explanation in a few seconds but you can see all the cars are being inspected Ed and getting ready to be uh chipped out of this plant so those are the final inspection line right there that you see and on the
right you see all the parts this is where they assemble things um by the way there's a forklift coming that's basically Wireless and driverless so there's no one driving this it drives by itself and it's uh carrying all this part with no drivers and not cool and there's a whole bunch of these uh automated uh driverless system in the plant some TOA Factory has more than others okay so we're going to Quick take a look at the uh quality control area all right guys so I'm in the final inspection line of the Lexus uh Factory
here at tahara and you know what interesting thing is that he said that there's more than 1,700 different categories of things they have to check from the beginning to the end to make sure that every Lexus model meets and exceed the standard that is perfect there's no defect no quality issues and you can tell uh this lady here is checking for everything this is the paint quality check the fit and finish the alignment you know the stuff that I talk about quite a bit when I'm always checking for the gaps and Alignment well that's what
exactly they're doing here and so in case you're ever wondering why David is so obsessed with checking for alignment and paint quality well this is uh the environment I grew up in this is what I did for many years for a number of different car company so I'm super picky but these guys are also checking for parts fit not just the paint not just the body fit and finish and Alignment but making sure that all the parts are functional they fit properly and also because each of the car is somewhat custom build based on either
the dealer or the customer ordering it that way they also double check to make sure that everything that the customer asked for is indeed featured in the car it's installed in the car because it's possible that there could be a wrong part or something is missing so they do check that and they're able to download that spec onto the smartphone a dedicated smartphone and they can actually scroll through and check to make sure all the parts that were supposed to having me installed on this uh vehicle is in fact installed there so this is Nexus
LM we have the NX and we have more NX over there we have Lexus is behind the scene bright bright light but not super bright that there's too much reflection this is a perfect lighting almost like a studio lighting I call it so you can see the complete finish and you can see for any kind of defects as well as just being able to see the reflection of the paint and so forth uh so this lady has been checking for a while now she's been checking for for several minutes on the NX and so it
doesn't matter if you are buying just a small cheaper NX or more expensive car they go through the same quality checklist she just I just noticed she went and make sure that all the Caps are tightened properly I didn't know that they even check that and what else is she checking she's checking all kind of stuff on that side and this is the Lexus LM a van that we don't get to buy let's take a look at what this guy is doing over here and he's just making sure that everything is okay this lady once
again checking over and over again you have to have a really special eye to able to see any kind of defects and he's also checking here as well yeah he's got the smartphone that tells him what kind of options or standard equipment should be on this vehicle is inspecting to make sure that whatever that's ordered with a car is indeed staying with the car it's inside a car is making sure the key works also you know I take my hats off to these people who so meticulously check everything car after car day after day and
then never ever skip a step you know there that lady is still checking the LM over and over again to ensure everything meets the standard for Lexus there's a more checking and auditing of the Lexus model than the totem models and uh just just because it's Alexus but you can just see the quality of the paint you can see the quality of the entire fit and finish absolutely extraordinary so this is the end of the line in terms of quality control but there's a little bit more Beyond this as well all right guys so we're
toward the end of the tahara lineup right now we finished the inspection and then we are now at a final stages of the production this is where they do all the checks to make sure everything is done correctly not just the the Cosmetic stuff which was done a little bit earlier but here they're doing things like uh in this case sensor check so they're making sure that uh variety of different sensors that's attached and installed in the car is functional uh so for example uh adaptive cruise control and so for require sensor to be able
to have some kind of understanding of distance and so they're inputting the data into the computer so that the machine can learn and adapt the data correctly and so this is the beginning of this uh functional check at the very end of the line so more functional check right after the sensor calibration we have wheel alignment here and then they also have if you keep on moving along headlamp and steering angle check so there he's turning the steering all the way to the right then all the way to the left uh and that will double
check the angle of the steering and they're also doing a headlight check here as well so these are again as we move along final stages of final checks to make sure that everything is working fine okay so a little bit more to go here this is the now they're testing the the actual C camber of the wheel so that's the angle of the wheel they're doing the final check on that one and then they're entering another one actually car is coming out here so let's take a look at that let the car come out okay
so this some pass the inspection and it's going to enter soon the next Booth where they collect a drum roll test the big drum wheels on the bottom and they're going to be doing additional inspection and test here as well okay follow me now we're going to go into this uh area here so we can show you a little bit more about what they're doing okay so they're going to now put this on a roller test and they're going to check for speed transmission he's checking the windshield washer and uh also the headlight washer and
also double check that the speedometer is also accurate so he's going to enter the booth right now and he's going to begin to move move the car okay so we can go in a little bit okay he's going to actually drive that car right now let's take a look light is on the guard comes up and there you go he's driving the car on the roller machine and wow so quiet right this is the 350h version of the NX but so quiet they show the speed in the front on the screen there and he's driving
up to about what a bit 41 oh we driving almost 100 km per hour hour now yeah 112 115 km/ hour that's crazy the car is so rock steady there no vibrations nothing up to 135 it [Applause] went all right so that completes the test for the driving section this car's going to go on for a little bit more of a test and then finally it's ready to ship okay so now we are in the brake test area so uh we're going to drive simulated driving and then they're going to step on the brake to
make sure that uh braking is working and also between the left and the right side that's well balanced so they're going to let me see how fast they go I'm not quite sure oh they're going pretty fast too wow there he stepped on the brake and so that passed the test oh now they're checking the lamp make sure all the lights work so you can see that on the screen okay so next is they're going to uh drive the car on a simulated rough road you can see the textured rollers so instead of just a
regular roller it's going to simulate driving over rough terrain and so once the car comes over you'll see that happen very soon all right okay so now they're going to do the same test same kind of driving test but on a simulated rough road but they're going to be doing the testing on 10 20 and 30 km you can see here the roller it's rough uh now what's so remarkable is that the car is actually so St stable even though you're driving over this with textured roller look at that car is Rock Solid now not
moving at all up to 30 km and then and they're going to stop all right so that pass um the rough road tester they call it okay so just as you thought there's end of the test no there's more they're making sure that nothing is leaking that's a bit noisy because they're doing the dyo testing at the back there but making sure that nothing is leaking from engine oil braking fluid whatever it is they do a final check underneath the car and then there's still a few more checks after this before the car is shipped
over it's just amazing how much stuff they have to check to make sure over and over again that these cars are built to Perfection all right guys so so many checks and balances so many inspections so many audits but we are finally at the end of the tahara line with one more final check they're making sure all the things that maybe they might have discovered earlier is correctly done they're double checking triple checking in some cases to make sure that every single item in the car is designed and built to the Perfection to the same
standard that they always expect from Lexus and uh once that's done the car can finally leave the factory ready for shipping ready to come to the hands of the customers so we're finally done at our plant I hope you enjoyed this Factory visit so much to see I'm going to come back again I think later in the year to do the the other line which is for the Lexus GX toota Land Cruiser 250 series and also the um toota 4un so I think I'm allowed to come back for that one later in the year to
keep an eye out on it thanks everyone and you know what I got to say goodbye for now but we'll see you very soon
