The e-Palette is a symbol of Toyota's transformation into a mobility company. Ahead of a public rollout, what is happening at Toyota Motor Kyushu's Miyata Plant?
From shuttle to shop in just 5 minutes
That brings us to the concept of moving services. One such example is mobile tool calibration.
When assembling a car, the various parts are fastened with bolts and nuts, with each design specifying how firmly these should be tightened.
To achieve these values, workers use a measuring tool known as a torque wrench. These torque wrenches must themselves be periodically checked for accuracy in a process known as tool calibration.
Kanemaru
Torque wrench calibration is done by the Audit Section, whose members usually take advantage of weekend days when the wrenches aren’t being used to go around and collect them from each plant, then send them back after calibration.
With mobile tool calibration, an e-Palette fitted with calibration instruments goes to the plant, and the work is done during lunch breaks—on-demand torque wrench calibration, as it were.
This service is made possible by the e-Palette, with its spacious interior allowing for standing work, and features including a power supply and air-conditioned temperature control.
With this, we sought to create extra operating capacity by reducing the need for people to come in on weekends.
Another service being trialed is mobile vending. The Miyata Plant’s sprawling site has just three cafeterias, which are difficult to access on foot from the most distant workstations.
In an effort to solve this problem, e-Palettes are sent to areas located far from cafeterias and food stalls, carrying boxed lunches and drinks for sale.
Kanemaru
As with the tool calibration, mobile vending is partly about testing the feasibility of multitasking—that is, using the e-Palette in a wide range of applications by changing the interior setup at different times of day.
The e-Palette is equipped for mobile vending with a register and shelving fixtures to display products, then turned back into a people-mover to run as an on-demand bus or commuter shuttle.
For mobile tool calibration we mount a large workbench, which can also serve as a desk, turning the vehicle into a mobile office.
The MaaS Project Department makes the fixtures for customizing e-Palettes in-house. With a refit clocking in at under five minutes for a two-person team, these efforts have demonstrated that multitasking is feasible.