Car carpet supplier gets Toyota award

MANILA, Philippines - A relatively young Filipino company supplying carpets for cars won a coveted and prestigious Global Supplier Recognition Award from Toyota Motors of Japan for meeting the leading global carmaker’s tough Toyota Production System (TPS) standards.

Autocarpets, represented by its president Rafael Villarreal, was one of only five companies – the others being global multinational giants Tata Steel of India, Industrias Guidi of Argentina, Mahle Industries of North America, and Goshen Industries of Taiwan – that received the Regional Contribution Award given by Toyota Motors Japan during the 2012 Toyota Global Suppliers Convention held at the Nagoya Congress Center last Feb. 23.

Villarreal said that by winning the Regional Contribution Award, Autocarpets showed that Filipino manufacturing quality can meet global excellence standards and compete with the giant multinational conglomerates from developed first world countries.

“We don’t need to be a multinational company to be able to excel and be recognized by Toyota Motors Japan,” Villarreal said.

Autocarpets, he said, may well be the first company in the Southeast Asian region supplying parts and components for the assembly of Toyota cars that won the award.

The feat, it was learned, was made more impressive since it was only in 2009 that Autocarpets started to adopt the much-admired TPS that is credited with Toyota’s highly efficient “Just-In-Time” assembly line systems, enabling the carmaker to produce top quality vehicles at the most globally competitive cost.

The TPS drawn up by Toyota large-scale production analyst Taiichi Ohno, who later rose through the ranks to become executive vice president of the conglomerate, in the 1940s enabled their assembly lines to manufacture vehicles of high quality in a highly efficient way that reduced wastage and over production and increased profit through cost reduction.

Autocarpets was started in 2007 when local low-profile industrialist-businessman Egmidio Jose and his Sanoh Fulton Philippines, Inc. and Villarreal partnered to buy the automotive carpet making business of Philippine Carpet Manufacturing Corp.

Villarreal, former president of the Motor Vehicle Parts Manufacturers Association of the Philippines (MVPMAP), said that the accomplishment of Autocarpets boosted the case of local parts manufacturers that Filipino companies can be globally competitive.

“We just need enough government support,” Villarreal said.

MVPMAP has been calling on the government to provide support and urge car manufacturers, particularly the multinationals, to assemble more of their vehicles here to generate more manufacturing activity and provide more jobs to blue-collar workers.