K. Giriprakash

Tsutsumi (Japan), Oct. 25

Robots do most of the work at Toyota Motor Corporation’s plants across Japan, but the auto-maker, which is set to replace General Motors as the largest carmaker, claims that its workers still mean a lot to the company.

“For us, assembly line will always be manned by people. We take pride in our workers,” a high-ranking official with Toyota told Business Line.

At one of its largest plants in Tsutsumi in central Japan, where Prius hybrid is built, the body shop itself has about 1,000 robots and is 93 per cent automated. But, the official claims Toyota will never do away with workforce for most of its manufacturing processes.

The Tsutsumi plant itself has around 4,600 workers with an average age of 38.7 years. Though an official refused to disclose the attrition rate at the plant, he pointed out that the average number of years employees spend at the plant is about 18 years.

Last year, the plant rolled out about 4.7 lakh units and some of the cars it makes include, the Prius hybrid, Camry, Wish and Scion .

Officials at the Tsutsumi plant said even though the Toyota production system was very old, it continues to be fine tuned to adapt to changing needs of the company. “There has been no dilution of the basic principle of the Toyota Production System,” an official said.

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