Following my second Amazon site visit, I returned to Toyota Texas down in San Antonio, also for the second time. It’s approximately a 2 hour drive down from Austin. I went alone this time because I didn't really want to talk to anyone, just wanted to take more notes and try to drink in the experience a bit better. This let me chat with one of our tour guides a bit during transitions between buildings, which was nice.

Tour Structure

The following overview will not be chronological in the way my Amazon notes are. It wouldn’t help too much, because the factory tour itself was very circuitous - our path through the street grid barely followed the line chronologically - one weaves over and through the other, making an easy linear progression while driving somewhat implausible.

The arc was: sign up > arrival > entry (visitor center - completely separate building with a museum and an orientation room) > intro video > transition > entry (manufacturing facility) > circuitous bus ride through the facility (within this, we did see a range of key points, including like the ‘marriage’ point where the body and chassis meet, as well as the QC checks at the end, the welding area, some of the stamping area, one holding area for parts, etc etc - you do get a strong sense of how the line works, but it’s way to much for me to track in a sequential way and it’s far from comprehensive given the overall volume of the facility) > and finally, a return to the experience center.

The Loom

The visitor center is great. If Amazon is focused on managing perception of the business as an employer, then Toyota is definitely doing a bit more of a ‘we are awesome all around and you should either work here or buy our cars’ kind-of-thing, complete with some solid corporate storytelling about the founding of the company and the development of the Texas site. Of course, the video introduction notes plenty of statistics on the volume of investment in the area and the relationship with San Marcos and Texas, number of jobs, etc etc - however, this is only one piece of the tour and it’s very matter of fact, informative, & prideful (in a good way I think). The overall visit experience is fairly wide ranging in terms of giving a taste of history, cars that have been built there, what it’s like to work there, and of course the factory.

The first feature in the museum-y portion of the visitor center is a version of the original loom design that Kiichiro Toyoda sold in order to fund the start of the automotive business.

Tellingly, at the end, when I asked the tour guide about her favorite part of the facility, she said (paraphrasing) ‘everything in the plant is amazing, but my favorite part is the loom. When I look at the plant, I see the same thing - all these different strands weaving together into one thing.’ It was oddly poetic - and I think unrehearsed - I’m quite sure I had caught her off guard by asking about her favorite piece. She even seemed a bit embarrassed not to be answering that something in the factory was her favorite part. And I get it - she’s right, it’s a wonderful story and a wonderful analogy for thinking about the production line.

Both are intensely mechanical, yet feel somewhat organic at the same time (I’ve no idea how to articulate this impression - the design of the line felt like the path of a river carving through limestone. There’s also a sense of three-dimensionality to both - the loom pulling threads in varied directions and the line reaching up overhead before descending back down.

In the end, you’re left with a product that appears singular, whole, polished - fabric, or a glistening new truck - a product of the many different threads and the very visceral -  overwhelming - technical complexity of the production system.

It’s remarkable— and storytelling is a powerful thing.

A Small City

Inside the main facility, the streets are laid out in a grid. The autonomous—or "guided," one of the tour guides used that word though I’m not sure exactly what it means in this context/in what way they are guided—mobile robots play a little jingle and light up when they move, which I actually found quite pleasant (really though, who created the jingle? How many jingles did you test?)

Anyway, the robots are on the streets and they have right of way, which I found quite amusing. They're continuously supplying parts. You've got this grid with people driving cars, people walking, people driving these small rechargeable carts pulling little mini-trains of rolling parts. It's quite busy.

When you load up onto the trolley-looking bus—which is like a series of golf carts hooked together—you're stopping traffic. So you hop in quickly, get situated, and then you're off because you don't want to stop traffic for long.

The grid and the line don't match up in a super obvious way from the viewer's perspective. The line really weaves through and up and down. There are several points where they install the shocks early on the chassis when it's upside down, then there's a robot arm that flips it, and then they install the engine and body. At some point, the whole thing's lifted up a level so it goes above you and people work at chest height. Some people are even adding stuff to the bottom at that point, using exoskeletons to reach up.

There's another point where the car is taken from up high—I think this was called Godzilla or something—and this massive robot arm picks up the car, brings it down to level, and rotates it around in a series of repeated motions. It’s really impressive.

Key Stats and Setup

• 2.5 million square feet, about 46 football fields
• Vehicle comes off the line every 60 seconds
• 4,000 Toyota employees
• On-site suppliers have another 5,600 employees
• Just-in-time framework, pull system
• 100% of suppliers are on-site (which I find hard to believe—there's literally nothing Toyota gets directly? Remarkable regardless.)
• Facility is about 20 years old

People & Culture

Toyota uses the term "industrial athletes," which reminds me of Disney refusing to use "marks" for customers and pioneering the term "guests" in a park context instead. I imagine it makes a difference in how people perceive themselves and approach the work. They had a gym within the facility that new hires train at, and an experience center with simulations where you could try painting a vehicle door and a rope test to test arm mobility and coordination.

We got a lot of head nods, smiles, and waves. I don't know if they're waving to the tour guide or probably to the kids—there were families this time. There was definitely eye contact. Felt like people were glad you were there, like "cool, we’ve got some visitors." Seemed like there was pride in their work.

I tried to wave to a couple people just to test this out, but I felt a bit ridiculous as a bearded 31-year-old man surrounded by families with children on summer break. Maybe I should have stuck with the head nod. Regardless, my impression was that folks were proud to be there, and it seemed like cool work. You're working with people right next to you on the line, across from you, each contributing a component to this shared product. I don’t know what the pay and benefits are like etc, but my gut reaction was that I’d be excited to work in a Toyota facility - much much more so than in an Amazon facility, at least for the front-line / trenches roles that I saw.

If anyone on the line has an idea for an improvement, they fill out a paper form, turn it over to the continuous improvement team who then has someone partner with the originator of the idea to understand the problem and proposed solution, before testing it out separately. The tour guide emphasized that, if the idea is patented, the original proposer gets to retain some ongoing benefit from the royalties (I have to double check this because if true, then it’s nonstandard and fascinating).

Safety and Cleanliness

Safety design was everywhere. Entering the factory, there's a green archway that says "Safety is the door to all work." It's using this threshold to communicate the message really clearly. On the exit of that same arch, it says "Safety takes you home." The exit archway has this in three languages: Japanese, English, and Spanish. Safety signage was all over the facility and there was a traffic system that everyone seemed to know.  

The space was also ridiculously clean. Apparently the facility gets a deep clean twice a year when it shuts down — one week in winter and one week in summer. That's also when engineering comes in to make scheduled updates. The floor shone. Remarkable - especially for a 20-year facility.

The AC was also weirdly great—much cooler than the Amazon facility. Part of this is because of the paint and welding areas—they need really good air filtration. You could smell a little bit of it, sort of like new car-ish but more intense.

Random Observations

Helmets had first names and last initials on the front and weren’t covered in a palimpsest of stickers (which I see pretty often driving by construction sites and generally find cool, but doesn’t seem like Toyota’s vibe).  There were Texas-themed elements that amused me—the meeting space was called "the corral," there was an acronym "Team TX," and a funny wanted poster for some defect source in Western bounty style. It was cute.

Focus on QDR: Quality, Durability, Reliability. Each vehicle going through the line has a manifest on the hood telling people what's going to be added to it.

The weld shop was super cool—like a forest of welding robots, about 300 in the area we saw. There's a plastics department somewhere, but we didn't really see.

Sequoias and Tundras go through the line in whatever order they're ordered—they're very mixed. Getting the correct components for an individual car to the station on time sounds like a bonkers logistics problem.

Work schedule: two hours, break, rotate, two hours. Two shifts: 6:15am to afternoon and 6pm to 3:15am. That is intense.

Human-Robot Interaction

Amazon had their robots fenced off. Toyota's welding robots and lifting arms were separated too, sensibly. But the inventory robots were very mobile and integrated with the street network. They had their own lane like a bicycle lane, had right of way ahead of both vehicles and pedestrians, and used lights and that jingle to signal when moving. This made for kind of lively, pleasantly hectic "streetlife" — actually a good reference for urban cyberpunk aesthetics.

QC Ritual

Every vehicle flashes its lights and honks its horn as it comes off the line. Seems like it's both part of the QC process and a way of "ringing the bell" on a successful new product, maintaining a sense of tempo. I wonder what equivalents might exist for others.

TX and Japan

Given the range of bumper stickers I see in the vein of: “Built here lives here,” “No more room,” “Don’t California my Texas” and the early 2025 opposition to the Nippon Steel acquisition of US Steel -- I can’t help but be curious how Texans view the presence of a Japanese manufacturer. I could see it going either way — shared pride in industrial effort or frustration with an international presence. It certainly seemed favorable on-site, but the intro video definitely took the time to enumerate the benefits that the site had brought to the area and the playfully TX themed signage inside made me wonder.

It was quite cool to see signs in English, Spanish, and Japanese — not all that common in TX.

I recently visited Copenhagen and that’s an area where it’s clear there’s a lot of design-values alignment (resource efficiency, continual improvement, natural materials, high skill craftsmanship, etc) and consequently a lot of collaboration. I got something of an analogous sense at the Toyota TX facility (of an industrial flavor), but I wish I had the economic sociology case-study in hand.

Towards an Industrial Pattern Language

After the Amazon and Toyota visits, I’ve found myself reflecting on the spaces in largely aesthetic terms. In this vein, here are some of the patterns I observed (from across both spaces) which might be candidates for an industrial-spaces version of A Pattern Language.

Manufacturing Patterns

Distribution Patterns

Threshold and Transition Patterns

• Safety Thresholds
• Entrance Transitions
• Security Boundaries
• Lobby
• Foyer
• Introductory Video

Navigation and Wayfinding Patterns

• Color-Coded Pathways & Floor Markers
• Grids and hallways
• Conveyance systems
• Holding systems
• QR Codes
• Safety Signage
• Security Signage
• Reminders

Human-Machine Interface Patterns

• Light and Sound
• Guided Autonomy
• Ergonomic Adaptations
• Human - Machine Boundaries
• Right of Way

Information and Feedback Patterns

• Real-Time Flow Visualization
• Video monitoring
• Dashboards
• Gamification

Cultural Integration Patterns

• Local Identity Overlay
• Continuous Optimization Visibility
• Initiative Signage

Spatial Organization Patterns

• Over-head Conveyance
• Central Meeting Space
• Dynamic Inventory

Safety and Quality Patterns

• Defensive Visibility
• Error Detection Cascades
• Cross-Training and Rotation

Community and Culture Patterns

• Pride Artifacts
• Transparent Process
• Institutional Memory & Storytelling

Haiku

Jason Crawford has this fun post from 2021 on The poetry of progress - in this vein I just asked Claude to quickly write a Haiku based on my description of the Toyota facility, to see what it was like:

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Threads weave through steel streets—

robots hum their gentle songs,

one truck every minute.

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