De Toyota Prius doet het wereldwijd prima door de steeds maar stijgende olieprijs. Door de beperkte levering van batterijen kan Toyota de vraag niet bijhouden en loopt de levertijd op naar 4 maanden. Het befaamde Just-In-Time (JIT) concept hapert vanwege de bottleneck capaciteit bij de leverancier Panasonic EV. Aldus Financial Times.De 5 P’s van elke logistiek manager moeten luiden: perfect preparation prevents poor performance. Plannen maken is nuttig en nodig. En dat gebeurt dan ook veel en vaak. Hele legers vraagvoorspellers, voorraadbeheerders en productieplanners zijn ermee bezig. Toch komen die plannen maar zelden uit. De harde werkelijkheid is er een van grote onvoorspelbaarheid.
Het pull-systeem, zoals Toyota’s JIT, maakt op dit moment wat nu wordt gevraagd. Er worden geen overbodige voorraden gemaakt. Het verbruiken van een product aan het eind van de logistieke keten geeft onmiddellijk een signaal door de gehele logistieke keten heen om een nieuw product te maken. Nadelen zijn er ook. Er moet discipline zijn om alleen te reageren op de echte vraag van klanten. Pull is daarom niet altijd geschikt. Bij lange levertijden van onderdelen of bottleneck-capaciteiten moet je toch echt vooruit plannen. Dat blijkt ook weer uit de Prius-case We stelden dat pull in beginsel eenvoudig is. Het is echter een complexe uitdaging om te komen tot een daadwerkelijke synchronisatie van vraag en aanbod. Dat is niet mogelijk zonder geïntegreerde ICT ondersteuning systemen, het aanhouden van benodigde materialen en grondstoffen stroomopwaarts in de keten, een capaciteitsplanning van fabrieken en magazijnen.
JIT en MRP kunnen naast elkaar functioneren. De beheersing op afdelingsniveau kan met JIT, en daarmee pull, worden geregeld. Toch hebben sommige grondstoffen en onderdelen nog een langere levertijd en vragen sommige leveranciers om een reservering van productiecapaciteit lang voordat de bestelling wordt geplaatst. Voor de planning op goederenstroomniveau is dan MRP, en daarmee push, nodig, maar dan in vereenvoudigde vorm. Het is niet nodig elk afzonderlijk product te plannen. Een planning op goederenstroomniveau voor alleen kritieke producten en capaciteitsgroepen waarbij bottlenecks bestaan is dan voldoende.
Ontleend aan Financial Times 7 juli 2008:
The list of virtues possessed by Toyota Prius drivers just keeps growing. There is environmentalism, of course, and – as oil prices skip toward $150 a barrel – economic savvy. Increasingly, there is also patience.Waiting lists for Priuses have expanded sharply as demand outstrips the Japanese carmaker’s capacity to build the petrol-electric hybrid vehicles. Toyota – normally a paragon of supply-chain management – admits to “bottlenecks”, particularly in batteries, which have slowed turnover even as drivers clamour for more fuel-efficient cars.Prius sales last month in the US – where two in three of the cars are sold – were a third lower than in June 2007, at 11,765 units.
George Ramirez, sales manager at the Toyota dealership in Salinas, California, says customers are waiting between six weeks and four months for the cars – a particularly unusual situation in a country where buyers are accustomed to driving their choices straight off the lot.”The demand is very high,” Mr Ramirez says.Even those customers who are able to get their hands on a Prius may not be as happy as Toyota would like.
Some dealers are taking advantage of the shortage by charging more than the recommended sticker price, and buyers often have little choice but to take whatever colour and accessories are available.
A weakening US economy may be hurting hybrid sales in some places – the cars sell for roughly $5,000 more than equivalent gasoline-only models, after all – and strong sales early last year may have exaggerated the scope of recent declines.But dealers and analysts agree that lack of supply is Toyota’s primary problem: the company’s total US sales fell faster than General Motors’ in June in spite of GM’s fuel-guzzler-heavy product mix.Toyota can take credit for anticipating society’s long-term falling out with carbon-based fuels, having sold the first Prius in 1997. Even so, forecasting demand for hybrid vehicles has been a challenge.Hybrids are only beginning to move beyond niche-market status – annual Prius sales passed the 100,000 mark for the first time in 2004 – and sales are linked more directly than those of other cars to the volatile price of oil.”Even Toyota couldn’t predict such a high level for oil prices,” says Hirofumi Yokoi, analyst at CSM Worldwide, an automotive market research firm.
Still, the supply problems – which follow embarrassing vehicle recalls in 2006 and 2007 – may be another sign that Toyota’s rapid international growth in recent years is stretching its renowned management powers. “It’s even harder the more they expand outside their comfort zone,” Mr Yokoi says.Fixing the Prius shortage will take time. In addition to batteries, other hybrid components, such as regulators and transaxles, are also in short supply, insiders say.
Toyota has also been forced to scale down production at assembly plants to re-tool them to build the next Prius model, which is set to be launched around the world in early 2009.However, it is in batteries where the biggest shortage lies. Every battery in a Toyota hybrid is made at a factory in Shizuoka, Japan, by Panasonic EV Energy, a joint venture between Toyota and Matsushita Electric, Panasonic’s parent.
The factory can produce 500,000 nickel metal hydride battery packs a year, imposing a natural ceiling on Toyota’s total hybrid output.Toyota is targeting sales of about 450,000 hybrid vehicles this year, including petrol-electric versions of its Camry sedan and Lexus luxury models.Between March and May it sold an average of 47,000 hybrids a month – a pace that would have put it on track to sell about 85,000 more cars than expected by the end of the year.Panasonic EV is expanding capacity at the Shizuoka plant and should be able to churn out about 800,000 batteries a year from 2009.
It is also planning a new factory in Miyagi, northern Japan, which will raise annual output to more than 1m battery packs beginning in 2010.That will still leave many would-be buyers frustrated with petrol selling at more than $4 a gallon in the US.Other hybrid makers buy batteries from third-party manufacturers such as Sanyo, the Japanese electronics group.Toyota says it will not “cross off” the possibility of buying from outside if demand continues to soar, but believes that the benefits of its exclusive arrangement with Panasonic EV still outweigh the costs. “Stopgapping is not what we do,” the company says. “Right now, what we think is best for the customer is to use our own batteries. They’re not a black box for us.
“Toyota’s inability to meet demand could provide an opening for other hybrid makers, including Honda, GM and Ford, but for now drivers’ options are limited. Rivals’ production runs are small – Honda, considered a close rival to Toyota in hybrid technology, sold fewer than 52,000 units of its single hybrid model, a Civic sedan, last year – and many big launches are not planned until 2009 or beyond.Germany’s Daimler plans to offer a Mercedes-Benz S400 hybrid next year, although the luxury sedan will be far out of reach for most buyers. Also in 2009, Honda plans to offer a new hybrid-only five-door that will have an initial sales target of 200,000 units, part of a plan to sell 500,000 hybrid cars annually beginning early in the next decade.Yozo Hasegawa, author of Clean Car Wars , says Toyota will keep its lead in the segment if its new capacity comes online as scheduled, “but its relative advantage is diminishing”, he adds.
Tags: Checklisten, inkoop, Soms gaat het fout, supply-chain-management, toyota
