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Tuesday 28th: Toyota Automobile Factory
Okay, so I did have one main reason for selecting Nagoya as my Winter getaway destination: the public tour of the Toyota factory in nearby Toyota City. Yes, the tour was in English, but you could only get in if you pre-registered like two weeks in advance. I was supposed to arrive at the museum entrance by 10:30am to set out for the 11am tour, but the bus schedule to get this far out of the main city wasn't as convenient as I thought it would be. I arrived at the museum at exactly 11:03am... just in time to see two European-looking men getting onto a bus. Yikes, had I been 15 seconds later, I would have missed the tour completely.
And what a shame it would have been since I found the tour of the welding and assembly shops to be absolutely fascinating. It's true, robots and automation do most of the work around here. In one room, 12 "chicken-like" robots do spot welding. It's so hypnotizing watching how they manuever around the body of the car to press their torches right up to where they need to be. And of course, watching the sparks fly is like watching a mini fireworks show.
I did take notice of the fact of how few humans there were walking around. Robots towed carts and carried parts along the assembly line while humans did things like sort pieces and attach strips and doors. I can't help but think of all the people who are left unemployed because of the innovations. Oh well... they need people to build those robots, right? haha
The pride of the Toyota assembly line is something they call the "Andou System." It's basically a service-call system if any quality control inspector or anyone else doing work on the line notices anything wrong with a car passing through their station. Since the entire assembly line in one long continuous stream, a problem in one section affects the timing of all the other 16 or so stations. By having constant situation-monitoring of the entire assembly line available to everyone in the building, supervisors and technicians can attend to problems swiftly... kinda like a roaming pit crew working under the same time-pressures.
Unfortunately I couldn't take photos/videos while on the tour, but I do have one personalized story to share. At one point in the tour, we were brought to an "activity room" where we could test ourselves on certain tasks that the technicians are doing down on the floor. One task was a tray of 16 short cylinders, red on one end, yellow on the other. You were supposed to flip all the cylinders from one color to the other as fast as you could. Most people could get it done in like 15-16 seconds, but the video that accompanied the station said the plant record was 13-seconds.
I did it in 10... and yes, I want a prize.
Heh heh, though I wonder if they don't just say the record was 13 seconds to give people a confidence boost. Consider my confidence boosted!!
#18: The only photo of anything resembling the assembly line. If you notice the two cable being suspended from the ceiling with the yellow rotating lights, that's the Andou System to call for a supervisor.
On my way back to the main city, I stopped at the "Nagoya Tram and Subway Museum," but it wasn't as interesting as I thought it would be. Oddly enough, this city had two museums of this nature (the Japanese lurve their trains), but this was the only one I could get to.
#19: Oasis21 looks all future-y at night.
#20: Complete with glowing dinosaur topiary. I question the relevance, but I don't question the awesomeness.
