The Hindu Business Line : Toyota opens service parts centre

The centre, which can be expanded four times its current size, will cater to the service parts for all current and future Toyota cars. The centre was set up at a cost of Rs 24 crore and has 102 employees, a press statement from the company said on Friday.

Inaugurating the parts centre, Mr Yoshimi Inaba, Executive Vice-President, Toyota Motor Corporation, said, "We service around 2,400 Toyota vehicles a day through 57 dealer service outlets across the country. The centre is geared to handle not just the current demands of our business but also our future expansion plans as well."

Regular Supply

Service parts from the centre will be supplied to the regional parts' centre in Gurgaon and 26 service outlets, mostly in central & south India. Daily supply to all the dealers is ensured through dedicated Transystem trucks based on Toyota's principles of supply chain management using the milk-run concept.

Standardised daily dispatch plan, standard fixed routes and other systems form the backbone for daily supply to dealerships. Transystem currently operates 11 trucks across the main routes and 17 smaller trucks to further reach the end-point. Transystem is a joint venture of Mitsui and Transport Corporation of India.

At the centre, the parts rack setup and layout has been designed to minimise the errors in picking, binning and shipping operations, and to make packing operations of service parts easy and efficient.

To up productivity

It has facilities to unload two shipping containers at a time within a minimum time frame. The operations are being automated to increase efficiency and productivity of manpower, the statement said.

The statement said in most supply chain and logistic applications, forecasting demand plays a very crucial role. But, Toyota has done away with forecasting and instead put systems in place to effectively manage inventory at all ends by controlling all the parameters involved.

Minimising inventory at all ends also poses the challenge of just-in-time supply of parts to the customers. Through strict adherence to certain basic supply chain principles and global standard guidelines, which is Just-In-Time principle, Max-max concept and Heijunka (ordering stability), Toyota Kirloskar Motor has been able to manage 97 per cent of the materials within 24 hours and achieve a Repair Order Fill Rate (ROFR) of 94 per cent through service outlets. ROFR is an indication of availability of all parts required to service one particular vehicle at any given point of time.

Smooth flow

The same Toyota Production Systems concept that gives the highest quality vehicles is extended to service parts for Just-In-Time parts supply. Toyota follows `Small Lot, Frequent Ordering and Delivery' for smooth flow of parts in the entire logistics chain, thereby reducing inventory and associated costs.

Toyota also encourages its dealers to order daily and receive service parts daily and gradually move into Sell-One, Buy-One mode. This Max-Max concept allows dealers to order only what he has sold yesterday, today or even in the last one hour.

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