Overview of Toyota's Warehousing System and Operations

Toyota’s warehousing system and operations are strategic to keep-up the costs and efficiency of their spare parts deliveries, particularly considering the volume of their parts and demand list that they handle. The Volume moving in and out of their core parts centres every day is simply fascinating. Their facilities in Ontario, California and Kentucky stored some 260,000 exclusive parts and ships around 115,000 order lines each day. Dealing with this complexity everyday requires huge number of regular procedures and systems, also great stock visibility.

The North American Parts Operations has a diverse of parts delivery centres and proprietorship models in North America. According to Swartz ‘’Keeping these major operations in-house is a priority for Toyota, specifically when it comes to implementing the Toyota Production System (TPS) and its procedures. The major change in recent years has been growth in North American Sourcing, some years ago 65% of the service parts that NAPO transported were from Japan or merged there, with 35% from North America this ratio has overturned which has impacted transport routes, space and control in core parts centres.

The PCK in Hebron which is the major warehouse for North-American production parts is now operating on two shifts and has increased their working hours. The warehouse was also a completely new operation, as Japan service parts supply chain has a unique character and is made up of solid network of small delivery centres delivering to providers various times a day. There is a decline in Japan-sourced parts which has released some capacity for their warehouse, but PCC still has more than 185,000 distinct parts and 35,000 order demands per day. The PCC has played vital role as Toyota’s exports are ahead the US increase, shipping containers not only to Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico but also to countries in Middle East etc. The Los Angeles Parts distribution centre is a great example of efficiency and ergonomic measures which Toyota has implemented across its PDC’s, many of them creating in huge part centres.

The LAPDC benefited from a precise ‘’rejuvenation’’ scheme between 2009-2013, which Toyota carried out without ending their operations, for example their parts are now kept in relation to their frequency with 80% of the mostly picked and controlled parts stored in their so-called ‘’Golden Shelves’’ which require slight blending or reaching. The Warehouse has made improvement in achieving its quality and Kaizen targets. The past financial year it has made a 14% reduction in transporting errors compared to last year analysing one error for each 1400 lines distributed, also had reduced rejections when dealers are mistakenly told a part in its inventory by 15%.