Johnson Controls, Inc. - Automotive Systems Group: The Georgetown, Kentucky Plants

This case focuses on the auto supply industry and especially the relations between Johnson Controls (JCI) Automotive Systems Group’s Georgetown plant and its main customer, Toyota Motor Manufacturing. Toyota’s U.S. assembly plant, for which JCI supplies seats on a just-in-time basis. It can be used to investigate the differing patterns of supplier relations that were traditional in the U.S. and Japanese auto industries, to examine the adaptations that Toyota made to its traditional methods to deal with a U.S. supplier, and to study the very high degree of coordination and cooperation that is achieved between the two companies. JCI’s adoption of a version of the Toyota Production System is also discussed.