Quality of Tacoma in Mexico verses Texas built.

Besides the labor cost, another significant factor in major players putting manufacturing facilities in China have to do with 2 major factors (besides production costs)
1) availability of distribution...so, if Toyota is trying to sell more trucks in the Asian market, they will open more assembly plants to those distribution points
2) and the most important reason of all, to gain more access to the Chinese market. Whether we like it or not, the Chinese economy and the consumer buying power of that market is the largest growth area for any multi-national manufacturer like Toyota. Since the Chinese market is controlled by non-market forces to a great extent (i.e. Chinese leadership controls who gets access to the market), then there is a huge incentive to have at least some production done on the Chinese mainland. I mean, just look at the MAJOR news Volvo put out in the past month regarding increasing manufacturing in China...the primary driver of this wasn't production costs...it was access to that market.

 

Having worked in a Kaizen Facility I can personally tell you it sucks and is not really about quality. The "Continuous Improvement" applies to continuously reducing the Cycle Time and or getting by with less, and making the product cheaper.

 

Welcome to my ignore list.

 

Can't say I am that disappointed.

 

I have a few minutes. Let me explain "quality" as it pertains to the masses I think.
Let's take a simple component on our Tacomas - Outside door handles. (btw I don't design or manufacture or sell or do anything remotely connected to door handles - I just chose them at random.)
Toyota engineers know, and have known forever, how robust the design needs to be in order to function for "X" number of pulls before failure. Well, back in the day, they were made of metal because... material science was what it was 20 years ago. Metal was available, cheap and overdesigned. Now they are made of plastic. Because they use a different and cheaper alternative does that mean less quality? What if the rejection rate and failure rate was actually better with plastic? What if they lasted just as long as the metal ones? Quality seems to mean two different things to most people, and we debate it all the time here. You have the "quality" that means A) it meets certain design criteria and failure targets or B) it looks and feels "quality." Let's compare shutting a Mercedes 500 series door to shutting our Tacoma door. The Mercedes feels like a much more quality product right? Heavy, shuts with that satisfying "thunk" and just screams quality. But, what if certain door parts on that car had a 2X failure rate to the Tacoma? Is it still a quality product? Of course not. Even though it screams "quality," if it breaks a bunch of times then it's junk, even though it feels better to the user.

I just used that example to show how quality means certain things to certain people and most of it is based on prior life experiences. I have never sat in the back seat of a 1962 Buick but my Dad used to say that was the epitome of quality. I'm pretty sure my son will never be around a 1962 Buick so his definition of "quality" will be something different and probably Subaru related since he drives and loves his Subies.
How many times do we read in this forum about a guy comparing his past vehicle to his new vehicle? He has one data point out of hundreds of thousands. One data point? Seriously? But, to be fair, his one data point is all he has to work with and that is his little world.

How come guys buy a Tacoma even though they had a BMW or Mercedes or Audi? All three are thought of as "quality" automobiles right? They bought the Tacoma because of lifestyle changes or for the image. Then they get here and talk about quality lol. They. are. not. the. same. thing. fellas.

It's really difficult to compare a Tacoma overall "quality" to any other vehicle and vice versa. You can compare components (like my door handle example) but not the overall vehicle because they were not designed to be the same thing. People really want to compare the 4Runner and the Tacoma. It's apples and oranges though but they somehow reason that they should be the same in terms of "quality." Truly, I bet if we compared the "quality" of those two vehicles as far as part rejection rates and QC items they would be very similar. Yet, when you drive them, they feel totally different. They say the 4Runner is a more "quality" vehicle. Well, fit and finish is the same, performance is the same (gets you from point "A" to point "B") and, believe it or not, the 4Runner has had their share of TSB's and recalls. Takata airbags anyone? What those people are really comparing is their "experience" while driving and examining the vehicle. The Tacoma was carefully engineered to feel like a truck. To look like a truck. To sound like a truck. To compete with their rivals. What does that mean? It means focus groups and potential customers in target demographics have given Toyota their vision of what a truck should be, and Toyota hit it out of the park, so much so they are expanding production capacity. They did the same for 4Runners too, and guess what: The 4Runner target customers didn't want their vehicles to be trucks. The truck guys didn't want their trucks to be SUV's, and both engineering groups did an excellent job.

To summarize, it is possible to make things faster and cheaper and still improve quality. It just might not fit some people's ideas of what quality is about.

Sorry I rambled and this was not directed at you, as much as I have been wanting to post something along these lines and this was as good a place as any!

 

Excellent post...you definitely 'get' it. Also means comparing a Gen 2 Taco to a Gen 3 Taco for example is a meaningless exercise, unless one is comparing failure rates of the exact same BOM item (i.e. the wear rate, failure rate, etc. of the factory provided brake pads between the the 2015 and the 2017 Tacos for example.)

 

I get what your saying, was just giving some life experiences having worked in a Kaizen Facility. Take a part like a Hood for example, in the past the underside bracing would have been fully welded to the skin making for a solid hood with no flex. The 1st action workout would have cut from being fully welded to spot welded. 2nd action workout would cut the number of spot welds. 3rd action workout cuts more spot welds and use glue. 4th action workout eliminates all spot welds but glue is fully applied to every spot of the bracing. 5th action workout cuts the glue in half. 6th action workout just uses a few globs of glue in a few spots. Is the hood still the same quality as it was before being put thru Kaizen? Now look at every part of the vehicle as it continuously goes thru this same process. The company always insists that the cost of production go down and you as the worker get frustrated because you know that quality is going to go down at some point.

 

The main reason things are built in China--other than cheap labor--is access to cheap raw materials. China has access to a great supply of commodities used in manufacturing that are either mined in China or obtained en masse from suppliers in Africa and the Middle East.


Edit: Also, there is a lot of misinformation flowing around this forum about Kaizen and the Toyota Production System; however, I am not here to give Six Sigma classes for free...

 

I had a 2010 4Runner. The only issue I ever had with it was the steering shaft needed to be replaced around 76,000 miles. It was still covered under the warranty I'd purchased. I traded her in with 98,000 miles and she was rock solid. I actually wish I'd kept it.

 

Good Lord you are bringing up nightmares now, Six Sigma was absolutely horrible too, I have some silly Green Belt award or trophy tossed away in my junk room.

 

Cheap materials aren't available in Africa? or South East Asia? If it's just about Labor and materials, it can be done in many more places than just China. Companies also wouldn't need to deal with outrageous CCP bullying of foreign Corporations.

I have worked for one of the largest Financial services firm in the world as a financial professional, and I am now doing work for one of the largest tech company in the world. A large portion of the H1-b hires come from only two countries ---Indian and China. No two countries contribute to the H1b pool more than those two. There is a good reason for that.

It's a common fallacy to discount the importance of Human capital. There is cheap labor everywhere in the world. However, Chinese labor is of a much higher quality than other places, and their aggregated human capital quality leads to a more organized government and infrastructure as an after-effect.

I don't give a crap about any prevailing Academic or Economic theories, because anything that comes out of today's modern Academic circles is too full of PC euphemistic BS to mean anything or accurately describe the reality of the world.

 

Mex built, with very minimal complaints. 2100rpm slightly buzzing, the faintest rear diff whine, and the CPS and diff recalls are not part of mine.

 

Was your truck wrecked before, your passenger side rear door looks like its a different shade of silver?

 

Looks like just a shadow to me?

 

You could be right that its a shadow, as soon as I glanced at that pic the entire door looked like a different shade.

 

No theories here, only fact in no particular order. Infrastructure and trained workforce are the keys. Ports, shippers, suppliers, etc. Next are manufacturers of local parts. Next is a customer base that will purchase product locally. These are simple econ 101 concepts. You don't build a product for a market a half a world away if you can build it in a local plant. Name the two biggest markets for vehicles in the world. China and the Americas. India could be but most of their population can't afford a Tacoma or even a new Yaris.

 

All Tacoma's built everywhere will now be labeled as junk no matter where they are made , moving stock in to Honda now . ridge lines for everyone !

 

It is funny, I see here and there on the internet the Honda folk whining about Honda not being what it once was. It is just a perpetual thing. People have been saying this same crap forever, and everything old enough to have the shit driven out of it from both Toyota and Honda has proven well above average. Shit my Mom has over 200k on an 09 Ford Flex with nothing but routine maintenance and tires. Everything seems to be built reasonably well now a days with a few random mishaps.

 

This.

Honestly I feel like besides the super luxury models of manufacturers lineup everything on the lower end to mid grade is pretty reliable these days

 

Better not have been, I got it with 11 miles! The lighting was almost at sunset when I took the pic, and I was not square to it. The Snugtop Hiliner colour is off slightly.