Inside Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky’s $1.8 billion reorganization
Inside Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky’s $1.8 billion reorganization
- Toyota’s largest manufacturing plant in Georgetown, Kentucky, is investing more than $1.8 billion in new technology.
- The new system, called K-flex, allows the plant to build SUVs, hybrids, EVs and sedans on a single assembly line.
- This flexible production line typically reduces the time and cost required to retrofit new vehicle models.
An autonomous sled carries the vehicle’s cannonballs, sending sparks in all directions, and a robotic arm the height of a basketball hoop is installed in the car’s window.
Like an otherworldly industrial symphony, each process plays its part in the complex rendition of the largest Toyota manufacturing plant on earth.
Located on 1,300 acres of land 110 miles from Louisville, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky (TMMK) represents the future of automotive production.
Toyota has 14 manufacturing plants across the United States, including in Indiana, Mississippi, and Jackson, Tennessee, where engine blocks, transmission cases, and housings are produced. So far, TMMK is the only Toyota plant in the world to implement this new technology.
However, as TMMK works to adapt its manufacturing capabilities, Toyota announced on November 18 that it will invest more than $912 million in renovating its manufacturing sites across five states, including TMMK and its Tennessee plant. The announcement comes a week after Toyota announced plans for a $13.9 billion battery factory in North Carolina.
Meanwhile, the company is spending $1.8 billion to install more flexible, technologically advanced production lines poised to redefine efficiency and scale at the plant, which will produce more than 435,600 vehicles and 714,400 engines in 2024.
Traditionally, manufacturing assembly lines have strict size requirements that limit production, but this is not the case with TMMK. SUVs, hybrids, EVs, and sedans can all be built on one line called K-flex.
What is Toyota’s new K-flex platform?
“A lot of people think that means flexibility in Kentucky, but what it really means is flexibility in the K platform,” said TMMK President Kelly Creech.
The Toyota-specific AK platform is a common skeleton that includes the chassis, suspension, and drivetrain of Toyota production vehicles such as the Camry, RAV, Highlander, Sienna, Lexus RX, and NX.
K-flex enables the versatility of a skeleton that shares SUV, hybrid, EV, and sedan all in one line.
Although only one of the three manufacturing lines is fully flexible, Creech, who began working at TMMK in 1990 as a member of the powertrain production team, said flexibility is essential across the assembly line as manufacturing demands evolve.
About 35 years ago, “we could only build sedans” due to size restrictions, he said. At the time, the industry produced about 80% sedans and 20% light trucks and SUVs. But “now that’s reversed,” Creech added.
To meet evolving consumer demands, Toyota is introducing new vehicle models. However, the traditional conversion process for electric and hybrid vehicles is expensive and time-consuming, which can delay production and strain production volumes.
As a result, automakers need to rethink the way they make cars to remain competitive in a market that is moving towards electrification and a wider variety of vehicles, Creech said.
“We had to have that flexibility, whether it’s a plug-in hybrid vehicle or a fully battery electric vehicle,” Creech said.
Traditionally, when preparing a new model, car manufacturers have invested heavily in modifying their production lines to match the dimensions of the next vehicle. That’s not the case with K-flex.
“So we’re able to significantly reduce not only our capital expenditures, but also our lead time to get ready for production. So we kind of have an advantage in this facility compared to a traditional facility, because every time we bring in a new vehicle, we’re changing some of the structure that’s there,” Chad Miller, vice president of manufacturing, said of the complexity required for different vehicles.
K-flex allows adjustment between many vehicles, but is not exhaustive. Some large vehicles, such as SUVs and frame trucks, are too large to be manufactured on flexible lines.
In addition to K platform products, TMMK also manufactures 4-cylinder and V6 engines, hydrogen fuel cell kits, axles, steering components, machine blocks, cylinder heads, crankshafts, camshafts, rod and axle assemblies and molds.
