The Toyota Century SUV is currently being produced at the Tahara plant in Japan. This luxury SUV is handcrafted by a team of 40 skilled workers, selected from a total of 1,500 factory personnel.
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Hiroki Tanaka, one of the selected workers in the Century SUV manufacturing team, had to undergo a mandatory training course and pass a certification exam. This exam consists of three parts: an initial assessment of basic skills, a written test on the history of Century, vehicle structure and related topics, and a practical assembly test.
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“The written test was harder than the practical test, with 200 questions, but I passed it for the first time by diligently reading books since my student days,” Hiroki said in an interview with Toyota’s internal magazine, Thoi dai Toyota. “I learned many new things, from the history of Toyota and Century to high-quality manufacturing techniques. It was an invaluable experience.”
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Hiroki Tanaka has been working for Toyota since 2007. After graduating from the Toyota Technical Academy, he started his career in the production workshop of the Land Cruiser. The experience of assembling the Land Cruiser chassis has provided him with a solid foundation for his current job, which is completing the suspension system for the Century. This job is particularly important because any mistakes can affect the finishing stages.
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Precision is always a concern for Toyota, but for the luxury Century line, it is a greater worry. While other car manufacturers allow a torque error of 20%, for the Century SUV, the allowable error is only 5%.
“With other models, each bolt is tightened once with a tightening machine,” Tanaka said. “On the Century assembly line, the requirements for precision are stricter, so we need to use a hand clamp tool to tighten them manually first, then tighten them again with a tightening machine. Finally, we use a torque wrench with rotational force measured by a computer.”
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While it takes an average of 5 seconds to tighten a bolt in a normal car, for this luxury SUV, it takes about 1 minute. This explains why Toyota can only produce three Century SUVs per day.
Thái Sơn (Tuoitrethudo)
Reference: Carscoops
