The Missouri job shop behind Toyota's makeover - Automotive News
The Toyota New Global Architecture, which Toyota managers call TNGA, is a multiheaded plan unveiled in 2012 that is now coming to market. Toyota believes it can cut the expense of creating products by grouping them into families with shared parts and engines. A smaller number of engines will power them, and the engines will be smaller and lighter weight, built on smaller and more flexible factory machinery in what, over time, will be physically smaller manufacturing plants. In April, Toyota announced plans to begin overhauling North American factories to prepare for TNGA. In Toyota's words, TNGA will enable Toyota to "produce vehicles with a lower center of gravity and lighter, more compact components, delivering to customers enhanced driving performance [and] greater fuel efficiency. And at this moment, a great deal of the responsibility rests on the shoulders of Bob Lloyd, CEO of Bodine Aluminum, which Toyota has owned for 25 years. Bodine -- pronounced BO'-deen -- is the sole source for all of Toyota's North American engine blocks and heads. At the beginning of the long supply chain that makes up Toyota's TNGA vision, there is a basic aluminum engine block -- and that is Bodine's. "Toyota's North American production starts here," says Lloyd during one of his regular visits to Bodine's casting plant here. Source: www.autonews.com
