Toyota Technical Review

We publish "Toyota Technical Review (TTR)" with the aim of fostering partnerships through technology introductions to stakeholders and recording Toyota's technical assets.

Contents

Special Feature: Continued: Toyota's Role in a Circular Economy

• Initiatives for a Circular Economy
  The transition from a linear economy built on the premise of mass production, mass consumption, and mass disposal to a circular economy based on the recycling of materials and products has started to take place on a global scale. The previous issue of the Toyota Technical Review discussed several of Toyota's initiatives for helping to achieve a circular economy, including an overview of these initiatives, material recycling, the methodology behind the company's design efforts to make end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) easier to dismantle, and the proper disposal and optimal use of automotive batteries. After reviewing why these initiatives for a circular economy are necessary, this issue covers Toyota's approach in more depth from two perspectives covering the company's fundamental activities for supporting a circular economy.
• Proposal of a Circular Economy Indicator for Vehicles
  The assessment of items such as material circulation and economic viability will play an essential role in the realization of a circular economy for vehicles. Since vehicles use a wide range of different materials, assessments that only consider recycling rates based on mass are not sufficiently accurate. Therefore, to assess the performance of material circulation factoring in environmental impacts, Toyota is working on a circular economy assessment methodology based on the Total Material Requirement (TMR) concept, which also incorporates the impacts of material extraction. The TMR concept can be used to assess the importance of recycling material resources with a high environmental impact even if low volumes of those materials are used in a vehicle. This article describes several circular economy indicators and proposes an indicator capable of assessing the performance of material circulation factoring in environmental impacts.
• Social Acceptance of a Circular Economy for Vehicles
  Toyota is promoting efforts to achieve a circular economy with the aim of breaking away from conventional linear economic practices. As part of these efforts, in 2022, Toyota teamed up with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and Toyota Central R&D Labs., Inc. to carry out research identifying the extent of the social acceptance of used parts and recycled materials in vehicles and other durable consumable goods with a long service life. This article presents the initial results obtained through this research.

Technical Papers / Technical Articles

• Achieving Lean Hospital Logistics Using Potaro (an Automated Delivery Robot Designed to Coexist with People) and a Multi-Robot Coordination System
  Most cases of robots being used to carry out deliveries inside a hospital instead of people remain limited to the transportation of low-volume items either at night or during the day. The technology described in this article was used as the basis to review the logistics within a hospital from the perspective of the Toyota Production System (TPS). As a result, manual transportation within the hospital was replaced extensively by robot deliveries through the adoption of automated mobile technology and a multi-robot coordination system targeting four high-priority items. Currently, 24 of these robots are in service, handling approximately 170 delivery trips per day with an average successful delivery rate of 98%. In a year and a half since the opening of a new hospital building, a total of 100,000 deliveries have been made, which adds up to a distance of more than 10,000 km. In terms of labor costs, this is equivalent to savings of around 250 million yen per year.

Technical Award News

• Cabin Comfort Improvement and Heating Energy Reduction under Cold Conditions Using Radiative Heater
• Proposal of Data-Based Preview Controller for Active Vehicle Suspension
• The Toyota Prius, the World's First Mass-Produced Hybrid Vehicle, 1997

List of Externally Published Papers

• List of Externally Published Papers for the first half of FY2024