Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Inc.:

In Practice

3: Set Goals

"Kaizen" for Success

"Kaizen," which means continuous improvement, is incorporated into design principles for all new Toyota Motor North America facilities.  Kaizen is applied to energy use in all facilities, and so Toyota established the goal that each new production plant must be more efficient than the last plant built.  Toyota believes this goal is achievable and a critical part of their corporate energy program.  They have also found that implementing the Kaizen objective has lead to new technological improvements in plant design and construction.  Setting specific performance targets for new plants has helped Toyota decrease energy intensity by 26% in 8 years.

4: Create Action Plan

Planning for Energy-Efficient New Construction

Toyota recognizes that planning for energy efficiency when constructing a new building and installing process equipment is more cost effective than retrofitting after construction.  To help ensure energy efficient designs, the company involves its well established energy management program team to review projects and provide guidance.  Toyota has made energy design feedback an integral part of both new construction and expansion projects.  Design feedback sheets are developed by the corporate energy team in response to proposed designs, and provided to plant construction and process installation groups for each project to ensure maximum efficiency within the project budget. 

This process has helped Toyota planners justify any slightly higher costs of designing more energy efficiency into equipment since decreased production costs are better understood.  At one facility, design feedback implemented by one project team in plant construction and facilities equipment modifications is expected to reduce energy consumption by 0.315 MMBTU/Vehicle compared to a nearly identical existing plant.   

Define Technical Steps & Targets (at the facility level)

Commitment to continuous improvement of energy performance requires having systems in place to identify opportunities for energy savings.  Toyota accomplishes this through their successful plant energy assessment format which they call a "Treasure Hunt."  A Treasure Hunt is a plant-wide assessment conducted to find energy reduction opportunities, and takes place in the span of a weekend.  It is Toyota's primary means of identifying opportunities to implement concepts from their energy reduction database at a specific plant. 

The Treasure Hunt uses the combined knowledge of the energy team and plant engineering, maintenance, and production staff members.  After the hunt, all opportunities identified are prioritized based on payback periods and difficulty of implementation. The three most significant energy saving opportunities identified are presented in an "out brief" or closing meetings by the Treasure Hunt team.  Events like this have allowed Toyota to continually improve their energy performance, decreasing energy intensity 8% while increasing production 4% in 2005 alone. 

Seeding Process Energy Use Improvements
 
In a motor vehicle assembly plant, the process of painting vehicles accounts for 50% of total plant energy consumption.  In addition to being one of the most significant energy users, vehicle painting is also one of the most important and complex parts of the manufacturing process.  Consequently, proposing energy efficiency changes has frequently met with resistance from the process operators. To overcome this resistance, Toyota's energy team took a small step by funding a pilot project to transfer energy from the exhaust stream of paint booths to the supply stream, known as "enthalpy recovery."

The pilot project was implemented and met savings expectations without compromising quality.  After this success, Toyota then moved to install this technology in six other plants.  These projects alone reduced CO2 by 3,100 metric tons, while also reducing water use by 105,000 kGal. 

5: Implement Action Plan

Without support at all levels of the organization, the Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America (TMMNA) energy program could not have been implemented.  For Toyota, implementing an organization-wide energy action plan starts at the top with specific corporate energy goals.  These goals are set and monitored by a corporate Energy Management Organization (EMO) which is led by the President and the Facility Control Manager.  Senior management involvement is continual, as managers attend corporate Environmental Steering Committee meetings monthly.  

Every plant-level EMO develops an action plan to meet each specific corporate energy goal and involves all plant team members.  These EMOs report to the corporate team on the action plans they develop and identify reduction targets, key improvements to be implemented, and each project's cost and schedule.  During the actual implementation stage for energy projects, each action plan is reviewed and updated quarterly with Senior Management.  This multi-level approach to energy initiatives is the backbone of TMMNA's extensive energy program, and the paybacks are not hard to find:  TMMNA met its goal of a 15 percent energy intensity reduction by 2005, two years early.

Heightened Awareness

As one of the activities of their Energy Management Organization, Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America makes educating all employees on energy management a priority.  Their goal is to encourage the adoption of the company's resource management philosophy and culture.   Toyota has discovered that corporate-wide communication helps to "yokoten" or transfer best practices from one plant to another. For this reason,  the Energy Management Organization takes creative approaches to communicating energy management, including energy fairs where innovative prizes are awarded, monthly awareness campaigns on a chosen subject, quarterly energy newsletters, as well as speeches and presentations given by corporate management.  One example of the specific facility awareness campaigns is educating team members on the costs of inefficiencies like compressed air leaks. 

Toyota goes beyond raising company awareness by sharing best practices and energy messages with suppliers.  This helps Toyota reach its goal of reducing energy intensity at all phases of manufacturing.  These awareness campaigns lead to strong support of energy programs resulting in one North American plant saving 50,000 MMBtu annually.

Model Plants Demonstrate Potential

To overcome the sentiment that implementing new energy saving ideas is risky, Toyota's corporate Energy Management Organization works with one "Model Plant" kaizen team to implement  ideas from their "Energy Kaizen Database."  The process of implementing thousands of energy saving ideas and overcoming obstacles to success can be lengthy.  However, Toyota has found that the paybacks are well worth it, because other plants visit the model plant and learn how to make best practices a reality with less resistance to change.  A model plant in Kentucky has demonstrated how certain changes can result in annual savings of 50,000 Btu per vehicle produced.

The Potential of Best Practices

Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America has developed an internal database where over 14,500 energy saving ideas are made accessible to all plant energy teams.  The database is used by plant energy managers looking for energy saving projects.  Toyota estimates that its North American plants have implemented 40 percent of these best practices.  To demonstrate potential energy savings of the "Kaizen Database", Toyota used their Texas Manufacturing facility as a source for design feedback. If the Texas plant implements all the design feedback ideas the plant's energy would be reduced by 3.18 MMBtu per vehicle compared to the mother plant. 

Metering Pays Off

It would be impossible for Toyota Motor Manufacturing N.A. to meet their ambitious energy goals without closely monitoring manufacturing energy use.  So Toyota established a metering standard stating that all plants should record hourly electric data broken down by process equipment.  Toyota requires all plants to meter large energy-consuming equipment (such as the paint shop) hourly and analyze energy use trends throughout the day and during downtime.  This allows energy teams to identify energy waste, such as during lunch and between shifts.  All metering data is available in a central database for employees to review.  The metering data is reported to Toyota's North American headquarters, and plant energy teams discuss metering trends at daily and weekly energy briefings to determine where and how energy improvements can be made.  These practices helped Toyota to meet their energy goals two years early.

6: Evaluate Progress

To achieve their goal of "Kaizen" or continuous improvement, Toyota has created an extensive progress evaluation structure that involves goal review, action plan review and pilot test projects.  Goal review happens on a weekly, monthly and annual basis, thereby ensuring that there are no surprises on the road to meeting energy goals.  Key Performance Indicators are reviewed monthly at every plant during energy meetings.  Next, all plant action plans are reviewed and updated monthly by senior management to evaluate how a plant is meeting its energy reduction goals, target Energy Performance Indicator scores, and key project implementation plans.   Year-end energy summary reports give plant managers a benchmark of how well they are achieving their energy objectives and the best practices they can adopt from other plants.

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