Produktion2030’s Graduate School in Canada: Visits at Amazon and Toyota

DAY 7 of our Produktion2030 course to Canada!

Today, we woke up in our hotel in Mississauga, close to Toronto. Our first visit of the day was to Amazon. We got a tour through the warehouse by two employees who explained the process from receiving packages, unpacking them, sorting them, to sending out the customer packages. It was impressive to see how all these little products end up at the customer.

The workers’ speed in delivering their tasks was very high – whether it was unpacking the deliveries and sorting them into the shelves or packing products into boxes and labeling them – people were working very quickly. We also discussed stress-related health issues, and we learned that Amazon provides flexible working arrangements and pays for many of their employees’ health issues.

Our guide also told us about the career development opportunities and said that there is a lot of opportunities for learning new skills and Amazon covers 95% of the training costs. However, we felt that the environment still was quite stressful, considering that employees work 10 hours, with only two 30-minute breaks per day.

After lunch, we got a factory visit in Toyota’s plant! We got an introduction in their experience center, and after a lot of safety instructions, we took a seat in the train that took us through the plant. The plant serves Canada, US, and Mexico with Toyota and Lexus cars, reaching around 500 000 cars per day with their 9000 employees working in two shifts. It was very interesting to see the Japanese Toyota culture as their corporate culture having such a strong impact in this Canadian factory.

Since it was the last evening together, we had a nice Mexican dinner in downtown Toronto!