CNET gets to look inside Toyota's hybrid factory
Toyota has long had a reputation as one of the highest quality car-makers in the world, and in large part of that reputation was built at a complex in Japan's Aichi prefecture known as Toyota City. Toyota City is a huge all-encompassing facility that actually includes 10 plants that produce almost everything that goes into cars and was the birthplace of the legendary Toyota production system. This system includes things like just-in-time manufacturing, and many other innovations that help the highly efficient facility produce such high quality products. Today, Toyota City produce several model lines including the Japanese market Camry, and the hybrid Prius.
Recently CNET got a chance to tour the plant that has produced Prius since its initial introduction in 1997. In its first full year of production in 1998 the factory produced 17,653 Priuses, and in 2005 that number increased almost ten-fold to 175,157. CNET tells about how the plant works and also the improvement process that yielded 600,000 ideas for improvement in the past year alone.
[Source: CNET]
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