MT Magazine May/June 2025

FEATURE STORY

THE WORKFORCE ISSUE

14

What would otherwise be a welded assembly of a considerable number of parts, this Volvo floor structure is a single casting – a “mega casting” in its parlance or a “gigacasting” in Tesla’s, which has popularized this revolutionary approach to vehicle construction since it started deploying it in 2020. Not only does this reduce the need for stamping machines and welding robots, but it also improves material use and logistics, all of which reduce manufacturing costs. (Image: Volvo)

from passenger cars to focus on trucks and SUVs, the Toyota Tacoma has been the top-selling small pickup for 20 consecutive years, and the aforementioned RAV4 was the bestselling SUV for eight years in a row. In the J.D. Power 2025 U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study, which looks at vehicles after three years of ownership, which is arguably a metric of quality (although in auto parlance it is considered “dependability” or “reliability”), Toyota’s Lexus is the leading brand; Toyota has six model-level awards, and the Toyota Avalon is the top overall model in the study. This is not to brag about Toyota but to make the point that the Toyota Production System gets results. Significant results. Today, Toyota is the top vehicle manufacturer in the world in terms of volume. It produced 10.4 million vehicles in 2024, besting Volkswagen Group’s 8.4 million, or about 24% more. But You Need To Go Beyond Kaizen However, unless something black swan in nature occurs between when this is written and when you read this, Toyota

Kaizen Works Regardless of what is being manufactured, in recent years, companies have turned to the Toyota Production System, a philosophy built around the core principle of “kaizen,” which is Japanese for “continuous improvement.” Industries in the United States have paid keen attention to the Toyota Production System since 1990, when MIT published “The Machine That Changed the World,” a pioneering text that explores the automotive industry and Toyota’s lean production principles in action. Year after year, Toyota makes changes to its products and in its plants. And it works. In 2024, the Toyota RAV4 had sales of 475,193 in the United States, becoming the country’s bestselling vehicle and surpassing the Ford F-150, which had held the top spot for 42 years running. Clearly, this is an example, in part, of the continuous, incremental improvement approach. The Toyota Camry has been the bestselling passenger car in the United States for 23 consecutive years, arguably taking its competition from Ford, GM, and Stellantis out of the segment. And while the Detroit Three have turned their attention away