Toyota's production line leads from lab to road

Toyota's production line leads from lab to road

Sparks of inspiration and close relations with group companies keep Toyota's central research labs motoring along, as Ichiko Fuyuno reports.
From the outside, Toyota's central research and development laboratories don't look like the intellectual powerhouse behind the world's most successful volume-car producer. Nestled in a collection of unimposing, low-rise buildings between a highway and a maglev railway, the laboratories are thinly populated and dimly lit: managers keep half the lights switched off to save electricity.

But behind the doors of this complex near Nagoya, 370 kilometres west of Tokyo, one of the most highly rated industrial research operations in the world is quietly ticking over.

In contrast with researchers at certain other industrial labs, some of the 700 chemists, physicists, materials scientists and engineers here openly publish their work in journals such as Nature. And innovations in materials, electronics and other technologies soon show up in production vehicles.

Analysts say that Toyota has mastered the art of transferring scientific acumen into its cars. "It knows how research is linked to the overall business," says Akinobu Okuda, a specialist in industrial strategy at the Mitsubishi Research Institute in Tokyo.

The laboratories are actually owned jointly by nine Toyota companies, which make everything from cars to forklift trucks. Most of the research is driven by the demands of engineers in these companies.

"We never end with basic research only," says Takashi Saito, a 54-year-old metallurgist and director of the laboratory materials department since 2003. "We always try to envisage final products."


[Forward thinking: first conceived in 1994, the Prius is now the world's leading hybrid car.]


The laboratory follows the Japanese corporate model, providing jobs for life in return for loyalty. Even senior employees are expected to tidy their workspace once a week. Some 20 to 30 researchers are hired each year. About half are new graduates, the rest come from universities or industry. Managers admit to concerns that the average age of its researchers is increasing. And women account for less than 10% of the research staff, only a dozen or so of whom are non-Japanese.

Researchers talk with group companies almost every day, to keep the ideas rolling. Kazumasa Takatori, head of the inorganic materials laboratory, says that these discussions — rather than journals or conferences — are the best way of staying ahead of rivals.

Smooth ride

The whole operation isn't madly expensive. The central lab spends just over 1% of Toyota's ¥770 billion (US$7 billion) annual research and development budget. Many research findings are kept in-house: results are only published after consultation with laboratory managers and group companies, and few areas of the laboratory are shown to visitors.

The dedication of the staff is obvious and the results have been impressive, outside analysts say. "The pride that researchers are taking an important role in the Toyota group is perhaps behind their achievements," says Yoshio Watanabe, an auto analyst at Mizuho Securities in Tokyo.

The central laboratory developed, for example, a transistor that controls the electric motor in the Prius hybrid car, which draws power from both an internal combustion engine and an electric motor. It also developed technology to reduce vibration and make the Prius a more comfortable ride.


Laboratory managers play down their contribution to the Prius. But its success is an example of Toyota's conservative yet relentless approach in bringing new technology to market. It began developing the hybrid technology in 1994, when energy prices were low, commercial prospects remote, and few other car makers were taking the idea seriously. Within three years, Toyota had rolled out the world's first hybrid car. At first, the car lost money, but growing demand for green vehicles has made it a success in many markets, including the United States, where buyers have to wait months for a vehicle.

Meanwhile, US manufacturers spurned hybrid technology to explore cars based on fuel cells, a more technically ambitious approach that has yet to reach commercial viability. On 14 May, officials from Toyota and General Motors (GM) agreed to collaborate more closely on environmental technologies.

Researchers at the laboratory say they never lose sight of the need to keep costs down. "We should have a business sense," says Saito. In 1998, he recalls, he and his colleagues discovered a titanium-based alloy with higher elastic deformation than any other (T. Saito et al. Science 300, 464−467; 2003). It found a commercial use as a frame for spectacles.

Saito knew the alloy, dubbed 'gum metal', had more potential uses, but it was too expensive — ¥100 million per tonne. He travelled to China ten times, even reaching Mongolia, in his quest for cheap niobium and tantalum to reduce the cost. The new alloy is now also used in golf shafts, and application in cars is under consideration. "It was a hard job," he says.

Requirements are often delivered quite bluntly to staff. Takatori remembers shuddering one summer day in 2000, when the president at a Toyota company that makes car components requested that his group develop a lead-free piezoceramic within two years.

"I thought it'd be impossible to do in 100 years," says the 51-year-old laboratory manager. Piezoceramics — which convert electricity into mechanical motion, or vice versa — are used in actuators and other car components. But they contain toxic lead. Scientists around the world had struggled to remove the metal without sacrificing performance.

Just-in-time ceramics

But Takatori and his team developed, with some help from the client, a lead-free ceramic that performed just as well as established materials. It was a close call: the project didn't come to fruition until two months before the deadline, when one team member noticed some crystals of an experimental material that were shinier than usual — and delivered ten times more piezoelectric performance than previous tests. Details of the material, a blend of sodium, tantalum and other chemicals, were published as soon as they had been patented (Y. Saito et al. Nature 432, 84−87, 2004).

Such innovations, along with the company's manufacturing prowess, have fuelled the ascendancy of Toyota's car division. In the year ended 31 March, Toyota made a record group net profit of ¥1.2 trillion, more than GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler combined, and a contrast with the loss that GM announced for the first quarter of 2005. Some analysts expect Toyota to displace GM as the world's largest car maker within five years.

Saito says that the laboratory has had a low profile — but that more will be expected of it as Toyota becomes more innovative. "We'll have to be able to produce more creative things from scratch," he predicts.


http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050620/ful...l/4351026a.html