Toyota plant tour and museum visit..

We have already reserved for the Toyota factory visit about 10 days back. We have to reach there at sharp 10 am. We reached 'Mikawa Toyota' station from Tajimi station. From the station, we walked to the Toyota headquarters, which took about 15 minutes.

TOYOTA headquarters office.

We reached there 5 minutes earlier and meet our guide. We can select the medium of guidance needed - either English or Japanese. We selected the first one and our guide gave us the one day pass for the factory visit. The trip will start at 10.30am only and we were let free to visit the small museum there. We saw the Toyota Partner Robot there.

Toyota partner robot.

Developed in 2004 for the 2005 Expo, the Toyota Partner Robots are humanoid robots and can walk and play the trumpet, a feat they perform on the hour with admirable skill.Toyota Partner Robots were developed to work with the elderly, through assisting in household chores and watching over them. At present, the technology is limited to them walking and playing various musical instruments.

As we walked inside we could see various types of cars manufactured at Toyota factory - an ultra light weight concept  car  and the latest toyota and lexus models are also displayed here. Also we could see different environmental friendly models of Toyota which is getting common in the streets of Japan and an i - unit which will become popular in the coming future. A small structure of the car manufacturing steps is also reproduced  in this museum.

The museum.

A sports car.

The car engine displayed.

The manufacturing process inside the factory.

Sharp at 10.30am , we started our journey to Motomachi factory. There were two groups - the Japanese guided tour group were in another bus. The guide explained the peculiarities of the buildings seen at Toyota city and the manufacturing process inside the factory that we are going to visit . Also she explained about the history of Toyota. The history of one of the biggest car manufacturing companies which had grown into 51 branches worldwide in its 55 years of growth. The manufacturing process includes mainly 4 steps. 
1. Stamping - where steel sheets are cut and stamped to form the body parts.

2. Welding - where robots weld about 400 body parts to form the car.

3. Painting - the washed car body is painted by applying the undercoat, intermediate and the topcoats.

4. Assembly - This is the only place where all the works are done by people. Here engines, wheels an other parts are installed.

We visited the Welding  and the Assembly units of Motomachi plant.

After that we had to travel for 10 minutes to reach the welding unit of Motomachi plant. There the guide gave us an introduction about the models being manufactured there and the procedures. Once we reached there, I got really surprised seeing the number of different robots welding the various car parts , of multiple models. Each robot is welding four or five parts and the car is moved to the next robot and the process is going on without any delay. A world of robots - it was really interesting. I couldn't believe my eyes seeing the work done by the robots and the number of cars moving at every minute.

Welding unit.

We got only 30 minutes to watch the welding process and we were carried to the assembly unit. We traveled another 8 minutes to reach there. There also our guide gave us the overall concept of the work being done at this unit. There are different subunits inside. We moved forward through the platform raised  for the visitors above the working plant. It was really more unbelievable sight there than that we have seen at the former place. At the first place we saw the workers sorting and arranging the car parts and other accessories, so that they can be carried to their respective assembling places easily. There were small vehicles inside the unit inorder to transport these things to their respective sites. Then we reached the place where a number of cars were assembled with their doors, windows etc. where workers are placed in lines on both sides of a moving bar along which car are moving forward slowly. Along with the movement of the car, every worker has to finish his part of assembling process without any delay. And the workers were doing their job in a very speedy manner.

Assembling section.

The way these people work cannot be imagined by people like me. Its really amazing. Doing things in such a speedy manner is impossible without much practise. Every one is doing their part of job in the correct time alloted to them.Then we reached that section were the engines , batteries and similar accessories are assembled. After that, the section of assembling the window glasses and door glasses , lights and other things. There is arrangement inside the unit to give alert to the supervisors if any fault is found during the manufacturing process, so that they can pull a chain hanged aside and stop the movement of the bar and hence the vehicles. And the engineers will ceck and solve the issue quickly to start the assembling porcess soon. It happened many times as we walked through this unit at various places. And this sort of issues are not at all causing any time delay for the entire operation.  At the end, we could see hundreds of cars that are manufactured there moving to their testing unit where they check the entire vehicle. 

The bus returned us to the place where we started our journey - at the headquarters of Toyota.