#19 The Takumi Kobo, Toyota's New Monozukuri Frontier: Part 1

In a building on the grounds of Toyota's head office, a roughly 60 square meters space has been partitioned off with wood-paneled walls.

Hanging neatly on these walls are various sizes of hammers and wooden mallets. Racks and display cases house a diverse array of decorative metal objects, from miniature cars to bonsai, flowers, fruits, origami cranes, samurai helmets, and baseball gloves. What looks at first like a studio for traditional crafts is actually the Takumi Kobo workshop.

The new Century, unveiled in September 2023, features an optional takumi scuff plate named the Masame.

Masame refers to the wood grain pattern found near the center of cedar and cypress logs, among others, when they are cut vertically. The Century's scuff plate design imitates these neat, straight grains.

This scuff plate was turned into a product by the Technical Development & Prototype Division's Takumi Kobo, who partnered with like-minded colleagues inside and outside the company. Takumi Kobo craftspeople create each unique scuff plate by hammering the design onto stainless steel plates, line by line.

The Technical Development & Prototype Division handles everything from developing the latest manufacturing methods and digital technologies to producing vehicle prototypes. This unit shapes Toyota's monozukuri future through both cutting-edge technologies and skilled craftsmanship.

Within this division, the Takumi Kobo was created in April 2022. Members consist of sheet metal takumi (artisans) from the division's Prototype Body Production Section, along with technicians responsible for devising and arranging new projects in collaboration with relevant units inside and outside Toyota. Together, they turn takumi skills into vehicles and products.

Building prototype vehicles is an essential part of car development, and the task of fabricating prototype bodies falls to craftspeople with outstanding sheet metal skills.

Generally, body parts for production cars are mass-produced using vast press machines. To make a small batch of prototypes, however, craftspeople hammer metal sheets into the desired shapes by hand, relying on their skills to create elaborate forms.

Ever since sheet metal craftspeople produced the body for Toyota's first prototype car, the Model A1, in 1935, these skills have been passed down through successive takumi generations.

"In recent years, advances in stamping technology have spurred a shift from working sheet metal by hand to more efficient press forming, even for prototype bodies," says Hitoshi Tsuchiya of the Prototype Body Production Section. "This is changing what is required of sheet metal technicians on the front lines of manufacturing."

Tsuchiya, who worked with Tanaka to establish the Takumi Kobo, joined Toyota in 1997 after graduating from its Technical Skills Academy. Since those youthful days, he has displayed the full potential of his brilliant sheet metal talents, winning in the Autobody Repair category at both national and international WorldSkills competitions.

"No matter how far press technologies advance and enable more efficient carmaking, sheet metal skills cannot be allowed to die out if we want to create innovative shapes and varied cars to satisfy increasingly diverse customer needs."

Both Tanaka and Tsuchiya share this sentiment.

Together with their superiors at the time and the team's current members, Tanaka and Tsuchiya held extensive discussions about the Takumi Kobo's role. By doing so, they came up with these three focal areas for their activities:

1）Inheritance and evolution of takumi skills

2）Providing new value to customers by striving to develop products that harness takumi skills, in the process nurturing personnel capable of creating such products

3）Creating user experiences and other customer touchpoints that help them appreciate the appeal and fun of monozukuri

Tanaka and his team began by creating customer touchpoints, which meant taking part in circuit driving events for Lexus owners and organizing hands-on metalworking sessions at housing exhibitions, with assistance from group company Toyota Smile Life.

They also set about exploring product ideas, including a prototype scuff plate that utilized sheet metal skills, which was displayed at the Gunma Parts Show in September 2021. The excellent response from visitors revealed the potential of such takumi-crafted products.

These humble efforts bore fruit, leading to the Takumi Kobo launch in April 2022, and the release of the scuff plate as an optional add-on for the new Century.

Visitors to the workshop we described earlier are greeted by the words "Takumi Kobo" in bold lettering on the wood-paneled wall. While looking at first glance like the work of a distinguished calligrapher, the lettering was, in fact, done by Oyaji Kawai, who happily took up Tsuchiya's request.