Toyota Daihatsu Engineering & Manufacturing (TDEM), Toyota’s regional office in Asia for engineering, manufacturing and other functions, recently launched the Toyota Social Support Center (TSSC), with the aim of creating a positive impact to communities and society through Toyota-unique CSR activities using the strengths of the Toyota Production System (TPS).
TDEM is Toyota’s regional office for Southeast and South Asia and is a different entity from Toyota Motor Thailand (TMT) which operates production and sales of vehicles as well as other services in Thailand.
According to Toyota, TPS is the company’s fundamental management approach which originated from the company’s production control system, to thoroughly eliminate inefficiency, with the goal of delivering quality products as quickly as possible according to customers’ orders.
“The root of TPS went back to automated looms invented by Sakichi Toyoda, father of the founder of Toyota Motor Corporation, and since then, TPS has been enhanced through many years of continuous improvements and applied to various functions even beyond production and logistics, now extending to planning, sales and administration,” the company stated in a press release.
Toyota believes that TPS has been and will continue to be an essential part of the company’s management for tirelessly improving its competitiveness toward sustainable growth and delivering its promise of the best mobility solutions to its customers, particularly during this one-in-a-century period of profound transformation which the global automotive industry is experiencing.
In its activities, TSSC focuses on not only making processes and operations more efficient. It also strengthens the organization with the concept of identifying and visualizing issues to be addressed and making continuous improvements on their own.
Katsushi Nishikawa, TDEM vice president in charge of TPS Promotion and responsible for TSSC, commented, “Through the TSSC, we would like to contribute to enhancing the standard of living and quality of life in Thailand. Our aim is to not only make improvements, but also share our knowhow to visualize and solve issues with our partner organizations, for helping them and the society at large make their work and operations more efficient and productive on their own.”
“Considering the recent conditions such as travel restriction amid the COVID-19 outbreak, we will start our activities within Thailand, and gradually ramp up our contribution to other parts of Asia. We hope Toyota Social Support Center will help both Toyota and the society grow in harmony in the long term,” he added.
Since its launch in June this year TSSC first supported the Bangbo Hospital located in the Samut Prakarn province, aiming to shorten the waiting time for patients through continuous improvements. The process which a joint team from the hospital, TDEM’s Property & Community Relation Management Section and TSSC identified was the process to prepare medicine in an efficient and just in time methodology that matches the patient’s prescription. The team helped the hospital visualize the work flow, identify areas for improvement and make the movement of staff members simpler and more efficient. As a result, the waiting time for patients to receive medicine decreased from 75 to 30 minutes on average (an improvement of 60%), enabling these patients leave the hospital quicker and with peace of mind.
TSSC is currently working with the hospital to make also other processes more efficient, and towards further shortening the entire duration that its patients are required to stay in the hospital, and allowing the hospital to treat a larger number of patients, he said.
Patcharee Saranurak, head of Pharmacy Department of the Bangbo Hospital said: “With the kind support from the TSSC team of Toyota Daihatsu Engineering & Manufacturing to share their knowledge about TPS and its basic way of thinking, we at the hospital’s pharmacy department were able to have better systematic analysis. We are applying these learnings to enhance our capabilities in our dispensing administration and efficiency of our patient service administration. In addition, our staff members are happy that this joint effort has helped us provide service in better quality, and more importantly, that our patients are even better satisfied with the quality of our holistic services at our Bangbo Hospital.”
In Nvember 2020, TSSC also commenced support to another medical organization, the Chakri Naruebodindra Medical Institute, starting with identifying processes and areas to drive improvement.
