Sci&Tech History

In the early morning of Saturday, February 1, 1997, Kariya plant burned down. By 9 A.M that day, all the production lines for P-valves, along with those for clutch and tandem master cylinders, and most of the special purpose tools that Aisin used for manufacture and quality control, had been destroyed. In just under 5 hours, Aisin’s production capacity for P-valves had vanished almost entirely, and would take months to rebuild. At that time Toyota was rolling more than fifteen thousand cars a day off about thirty production lines. But, by Wednesday, February 5, all production was ceased, rendering idle not only Toyota’s own plants but also the facilities and workers of many of the firms whose business it was to supply them.

What happened next, however, was every bit as dramatic as the disaster itself. In an astonishing coordinated response by over two hundred firms, and with very little direct oversight by either Aisin or Toyota, production of more than one hundred konds of P-valves was reestablished within three days after the fire. As soon as Thursday, February 6, two of Toyota’s plants had reopened, and by the following Monday, little more than a week after the crisis had begun, production of almost fourteen thousand cars a day had been restored. A week after that, the daily volume was right back at its predisaster level. The question is how?

Before the fires had even stopped burning, the Aisin’s engineers were on the job, assessing the damage and determining exactly what they needed done. They realized immediately that the recovery tasks, if it was to be performed fast enough to avert their now imminent doom, lay well beyond their capabilities as an individual firm and beyond the capabilities of their immediate suppliers. A much broader effort would be required, and one over which they would have little direct control.

No matter how much any of the individual firms in the Toyota group might have wanted to help, they still required the capability to do so. Bear in mind that very few of the sixty-two firms that became emergency producers of P-valves, or the more than 150 firms involved indirectly as suppliers, had any prior experiences making the valves. One firm involved in the recovery effort, Brother Industries, was a sewing machine manufacturer that had never even made car parts.

Credit: Duncan J Watts, Six Degrees, 2003.

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