ng machines, that have permitted it to achieve greater flexibility in assigning production runs. Toyota has also developed a method called "set-based concurrent engineering."
In this method, instead of pursuing a single prototype, and refining it through successive design iterations, Toyota engineers work simultaneously on designing several prototypes, along with the production tools for these prototypes. Although seemingly less efficient in the short run, this development procedure has allowed Toyota to reduce the overall development time and cost in the introduction of new models.
A particular emphasis of Toyota at the present time is the increase of efficiency in its white-collar work force, an area which at Toyota, as in Japanese industry generally, has tended to lag behind production efficiency. Toyota's goal is to increase white-collar productivity efficiency by ten percent.
The other overall goal of Toyota at this time is to increase its international manufacturing base, a goal driven in the short term by the high value of the Japanese yen, and in the long term by the perceived need to make Toyota a truly global company. In pursuit of this objective, for example, Toyota anticipates that in fiscal year 1995 its production of vehicles in North America will, for the first time, exceed its exports of Japan-built vehicles to North America. An overall long-term goal is to produce six million vehicles worldwide by the year 2000.
Toyota Motor Corporation is a diversified firm whose business operations range from financial services to telecommunications. Its core business, however, is the production of motor vehicles, predominantly for private consumer use, though there is significant production of mass-transit vehicles (buses) and industrial vehicles such as forklifts.
The great majority of all Toyota production is devoted to private passenger cars. In FY 1994, its production of these amounted to 3,293,550 automo...