Tata Motors Nano inspires Toyota

Look who has taken inspiration from the Tata Nano,its Toyota the global automobile giant.They are trying to reduce production costs of their vehicles by "lumping" some of the tens of thousands of car components together to form modules and systems. Analysts have been keen to see the fruits of the scheme for hints to its impact on the car's price, features and eventually the competitiveness of parts suppliers.When Tata did this with the Nano it was called a safety threat when Toyota does it its called Value Innovation[VI].

Toyota have gone ahead with this cost cutting on not their cheap hatches but the Toyota Crown,which is the first car to implement VI. The new Crown combined some electronic control units (ECUs), or mini-computers that control everything from power steering to windshield wipers, with components called actuators to create a simpler module and drive down costs[Now did we not hear this before with the Tata Nano].
Toyota was able to reduce the number of main ECUs to four from 60, as it had set out to do.The VI plan will be built into each new model that Toyota rolls out going forward, and Watanabe has said he expects it to help the company achieve annual savings of at least 300 billion yen ($2.8 billion) from the business year starting in April.

That said I like this move from toyota since their newer generation vehicles just kept on getting pricier and was reaching a point where rivals[especially korean manufacturers] looked a far better bet.

[Source:Guardian UK]