Since it’s become very obvious that many new people whom have never owned a Land Cruiser or even a Toyota are buying these vehicles and coming to MUD to gain knowledge and interact with a community; I thought it might be useful to have some understanding of the vehicle they are making an investment: where did it come from, who manufactures it, who are the players?
For most, this information will probably be irrelevant and a bit arcane; for others, this information might actually be important for them in understanding the foundation of the investment they just made….
It would be cool to get a current baseline understanding of Toyota supplier involvement in part/component/assembly logic for the new iterations. We know that the 250/GX will only be final assembly manufactured at Toyota Tahara (GX) and Hino Hamura (250).
You can see that the LC250/GX550 is an outsourced “black box” manufactured vehicle: a system where the supplier has achieved enough independence and technological systems development that basically allows Toyota to design a component/part/assembly/vehicle to then turn over the development, assembly, manufacture to this company and assumes that all QC/QA will be adhered to based on Toyota Engineering Standards and Protocols.
For Toyota, it’s all of the Toyota Group companies:
Aisin: transmissions, window regulators, door strikers, servo motor actuators, free wheel hubs, brake rotors, brake calipers, brake pads, braking systems, door locks, door handles, and the list goes on.
Denso: all electrical components, HV inverters, filtration systems, blower motors, HVAC systems, starters, alternators.
Toyota Gosei: weatherstripping, high pressure brake lines, dashboards, air intake tubing, rubber products.
Toyota Boshuku: seating systems, foam products, weatherstripping, and other products.
Toyota Industries: turbos, engines, engine block castings, and other products.
JTEKT: bearings, ring and pinion gears, power steering systems, and other component systems.
Aichi Steel: metal castings, forged metal parts, crankshafts, control arms, frame metals, body metals, axle shafts. Aichi Steel is the Toyota Group’s in-house metal foundry.
Hino: final assembly, axle housings, metal assemblies for light-medium duty trucks, diesel engines, and other component parts.
Then you have well known Toyota suppliers that jumped on-board to supply Toyota many, many years ago (many of them former Toyota employees whom were told “go start a company and do this for us”— mainly to skirt around post-war zaibatsu and keiretsu rules placed on them by MacArthur).
These are all independent companies whom were either formed by Toyota employees (funded by Toyota capital, of course) or companies that Toyota invested in, or companies that formed long-term supplier relations with Toyota many years ago.
Yazaki: wiring harnesses, dashboard clusters and meters, metering systems, gauges, sending units.
Aisan: throttle bodies and venturis and (antiquated), carbs and fuel pumps.
Murakami: all rear view mirrors
Koito: all lighting systems
ASMO: wiper systems, wiper motors, wiper arms, wiper fluid bottles.
ART: pistons and wrist pins
NPR (Nippon Piston Rings): Piston rings for engines.
Kojima Press Corp: heater system controls and heater boxes, air filter housings.
INOAC: rubber hoses for air intakes, plastic intake manifolds, rubber bits in the engine bay, (and if you ride bikes or motor bikes, bike tires!! IRC bike tires is INOAC Rubber Corporation).
Sumitumo: wire harness connectors
T.Rad: radiators, heater cores, intercoolers.
Tokai Rika: clocks, switches.
Hitachi Systems: air flow meters and air systems.
AGC (Asahi Glass Corporation): all glass parts.
The list goes on and on down hundreds of companies deep.
Your new Land Cruiser has well over 1000 different suppliers for every little nut, bolt, washer and everything else associated with the roughly 35,000 different parts in a modern vehicle.
All of these companies have been supported financially or engineering-wise by Toyota at some point to allow them to be independent partners whom have developed systems that allow them to do whatever they need to as long as they ascribe to design/function/cost parameters as laid out by Toyota.
The Land Cruiser/Land Cruiser Prado/LX have always been outsourced products with command and control from Toyota.
The only time Toyota brings these products in-house is when there is demand that outreaches supplier manufacturing capacity, which is a fine-line mathematical formula in and of itself….
For example; Toyota brought, in-house, 200 series manufacture to the Tahara plant in 2010 due to increase in demand and lack of production capacity at Toyota Auto Body Yoshiwara Plant.
Then they reduced and discontinued 200 series manufacturing at Toyota Tahara when Toyota Auto Body transferred 79 series Land Cruiser manufacturing from the Yoshiwara Plant to the Fujimatsu Plant and concurrently moved Toyota Coaster bus manufacture from Yoshiwara to Gifu Auto Body so then the Yoshiwara Plant was able to dedicate the entire plant (3 assembly lines) to Land Cruiser body manufacture and assembly.
Any way, this is primer to your new Land Cruiser or GX.
There are many changes happening at both production/manufacturing engineering levels at Toyota and its subsidiaries as well as all of its suppliers as the entire Toyota Production System is being revamped in real-time to the larger, global changes occurring in automobile manufacturing and use.
Below are just a couple of data points for what I saw yesterday when I spent some time underneath the new 250:
Rear axle housing: manufactured at the Hino Hamura assembly plant in Tokyo (where the truck itself is assembled):
Rear differential housing assembly: Hino Isesaki Plant (which is actually a small forging company called Rikken Forge Co): ring and pinion will always be Yutaka Seimitsu (JTEKT):
Hino is a Toyota Group company that specializes in outsource assembly and component manufacturing. They also specialize in medium-to-heavy duty trucks as well.
Hope this helps and happy to discuss more of this stuff if there are any Toyota manufacturing nerds out there.
For most, this information will probably be irrelevant and a bit arcane; for others, this information might actually be important for them in understanding the foundation of the investment they just made….
It would be cool to get a current baseline understanding of Toyota supplier involvement in part/component/assembly logic for the new iterations. We know that the 250/GX will only be final assembly manufactured at Toyota Tahara (GX) and Hino Hamura (250).
You can see that the LC250/GX550 is an outsourced “black box” manufactured vehicle: a system where the supplier has achieved enough independence and technological systems development that basically allows Toyota to design a component/part/assembly/vehicle to then turn over the development, assembly, manufacture to this company and assumes that all QC/QA will be adhered to based on Toyota Engineering Standards and Protocols.
For Toyota, it’s all of the Toyota Group companies:
Aisin: transmissions, window regulators, door strikers, servo motor actuators, free wheel hubs, brake rotors, brake calipers, brake pads, braking systems, door locks, door handles, and the list goes on.
Denso: all electrical components, HV inverters, filtration systems, blower motors, HVAC systems, starters, alternators.
Toyota Gosei: weatherstripping, high pressure brake lines, dashboards, air intake tubing, rubber products.
Toyota Boshuku: seating systems, foam products, weatherstripping, and other products.
Toyota Industries: turbos, engines, engine block castings, and other products.
JTEKT: bearings, ring and pinion gears, power steering systems, and other component systems.
Aichi Steel: metal castings, forged metal parts, crankshafts, control arms, frame metals, body metals, axle shafts. Aichi Steel is the Toyota Group’s in-house metal foundry.
Hino: final assembly, axle housings, metal assemblies for light-medium duty trucks, diesel engines, and other component parts.
Then you have well known Toyota suppliers that jumped on-board to supply Toyota many, many years ago (many of them former Toyota employees whom were told “go start a company and do this for us”— mainly to skirt around post-war zaibatsu and keiretsu rules placed on them by MacArthur).
These are all independent companies whom were either formed by Toyota employees (funded by Toyota capital, of course) or companies that Toyota invested in, or companies that formed long-term supplier relations with Toyota many years ago.
Yazaki: wiring harnesses, dashboard clusters and meters, metering systems, gauges, sending units.
Aisan: throttle bodies and venturis and (antiquated), carbs and fuel pumps.
Murakami: all rear view mirrors
Koito: all lighting systems
ASMO: wiper systems, wiper motors, wiper arms, wiper fluid bottles.
ART: pistons and wrist pins
NPR (Nippon Piston Rings): Piston rings for engines.
Kojima Press Corp: heater system controls and heater boxes, air filter housings.
INOAC: rubber hoses for air intakes, plastic intake manifolds, rubber bits in the engine bay, (and if you ride bikes or motor bikes, bike tires!! IRC bike tires is INOAC Rubber Corporation).
Sumitumo: wire harness connectors
T.Rad: radiators, heater cores, intercoolers.
Tokai Rika: clocks, switches.
Hitachi Systems: air flow meters and air systems.
AGC (Asahi Glass Corporation): all glass parts.
The list goes on and on down hundreds of companies deep.
Your new Land Cruiser has well over 1000 different suppliers for every little nut, bolt, washer and everything else associated with the roughly 35,000 different parts in a modern vehicle.
All of these companies have been supported financially or engineering-wise by Toyota at some point to allow them to be independent partners whom have developed systems that allow them to do whatever they need to as long as they ascribe to design/function/cost parameters as laid out by Toyota.
The Land Cruiser/Land Cruiser Prado/LX have always been outsourced products with command and control from Toyota.
The only time Toyota brings these products in-house is when there is demand that outreaches supplier manufacturing capacity, which is a fine-line mathematical formula in and of itself….
For example; Toyota brought, in-house, 200 series manufacture to the Tahara plant in 2010 due to increase in demand and lack of production capacity at Toyota Auto Body Yoshiwara Plant.
Then they reduced and discontinued 200 series manufacturing at Toyota Tahara when Toyota Auto Body transferred 79 series Land Cruiser manufacturing from the Yoshiwara Plant to the Fujimatsu Plant and concurrently moved Toyota Coaster bus manufacture from Yoshiwara to Gifu Auto Body so then the Yoshiwara Plant was able to dedicate the entire plant (3 assembly lines) to Land Cruiser body manufacture and assembly.
Any way, this is primer to your new Land Cruiser or GX.
There are many changes happening at both production/manufacturing engineering levels at Toyota and its subsidiaries as well as all of its suppliers as the entire Toyota Production System is being revamped in real-time to the larger, global changes occurring in automobile manufacturing and use.
Below are just a couple of data points for what I saw yesterday when I spent some time underneath the new 250:
Rear axle housing: manufactured at the Hino Hamura assembly plant in Tokyo (where the truck itself is assembled):
Rear differential housing assembly: Hino Isesaki Plant (which is actually a small forging company called Rikken Forge Co): ring and pinion will always be Yutaka Seimitsu (JTEKT):
Hino is a Toyota Group company that specializes in outsource assembly and component manufacturing. They also specialize in medium-to-heavy duty trucks as well.
Hope this helps and happy to discuss more of this stuff if there are any Toyota manufacturing nerds out there.
