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Toyota to end Australian production by 2017

There is more bad news for the Australian auto industry today, as Toyota has just announced that it will follow General Motors and Ford in shuttering its manufacturing operations on the continent. Production and assembly will cease by the end of 2017, but Toyota will remain in Australia as a sales and distribution company.
"We did everything that we could to transform our business, but the reality is that there are too many factors beyond our control that make it unviable to build cars in Australia," said Toyota Australia President and CEO Max Yasuda.
In an official statement, Yasuda said that the closure would directly affect 2,500 manufacturing employees and an unknown number of corporate workers. However, a report in the Australian newspaper The Age suggests that the jobs of 24,000 workers at Australian auto suppliers could also be in jeopardy. Toyota currently builds its Camry, Camry Hybrid, Aurion sedans in Australia, along with four-cylinder engines, and it plans to begin importing the Camry and Aurion after production stops.

Toyota retires robots in favor of humans to improve automaking process

Mitsuru Kawai is overseeing a return to the old ways at Toyota factories throughout Japan. Having spent 50 years at the Japanese automaker, Kawai remembers when manual skills were prized at the company and "experienced masters used to be called gods, and they could make anything." Company CEO Akio Toyoda personally chose Kawai to develop programs to teach workers metalcraft such as how to forge a crankshaft from scratch, and 100 workstations that formerly housed machines have been set aside for human training.
The idea is that when employees personally understand the fabrication of components, they will understand how to make better machines. Said Kawai, "To be the master of the machine, you have to have the knowledge and the skills to teach the machine." Lessons learned by the newly skilled workers have led to shorter production lines - in one case, 96percent shorter - improved parts production and less scrap.
Taking time to give workers the knowledge to solve problems instead of merely having them "feed parts into a machine and call somebody for help when it breaks down," Kawai's initiative is akin to that of Toyota's Operations Management Consulting Division, where new managers are given a length of time to finish a project but not given any help - they have to learn on their own. It's not a step back from Toyota's quest to build more than ten million cars a year; it's an effort to make sure that this time they don't sacrifice quality while making the effort. Said Kawai, "We need to become more solid and get back to basics."

Toyota donates engineers, not money, to country's largest anti-hunger charity

Key to production of any kind is efficiency - the ability to achieve maximum productivity with minimal effort or waste. Toyota has become a master of efficiency, with streamlined manufacturing operations around the world. In fact, the Japanese brand has become so well known for efficient operations that it now offers consulting services for organizations and companies outside the auto industry.
It also offers the same consulting for non-profits, free of charge. The New York Times took an in-depth look at the transformative impact that Toyota's engineers had on the city's charities, including The Food Bank, the country's largest anti-hunger charity. The auto manufacturer helped revolutionize the way these organizations served the community, showing that there's more to corporate philanthropy than just donating money.
Head on over to the Times' website and give the story a read.