To meet the four week production ramp requirements for the JIT delivery of over 40 different interior components for the Mazda 6 vehicle and over 300 sku options. These components needed to be delivered on-time with a two-day broadcast and capacity and product mix requirements needed to be adjusted daily. These demands required an appropriate balance of capital loading, inventory strategy (raw material, finished goods, and containers), flexible labor, and simple material flow.

IET worked with the production and product design team to prepare a specific and safe production philosophy for all components delivered to Mazda. These included pass-through components, low and high value added activity, and core processing. This product philosophy became the model for inventory strategy, material handing plans, flow, capital requirements, labor planning, space requirements, and the proposed facility layout. Components of launch success included simplified material flow, visual systems, combined kanban, supermarket and at-point-of-use storage, containerization planning, and flexible labor and shift schedule requirements. The launch requirements were met and customer expectations were exceeded by the production team.