Car safety is a hot topic around our house. After my sister-in-law was killed in a car accident several years ago, we realized the need for great attention to safety on the road. When Toyota invited me to visit their manufacturing plant in Indiana (TMMI), I jumped at the chance to see what they were doing behind the scenes to keep our families safe on the road.

I don’t have much experience with factories. I grew up in what my high school friends and I thought was a very small town – the suburbs of Washington D.C. – so my idea of what a small town is like is bound to be a bit unrealistic, but Evansville Indiana was definitely the smallest town I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure what expectations I had going into the plant tour of Toyota Motors Manufacturing, Indiana but whatever they were, they didn’t compare to what the experience was really like.

Is a Toyota Factory Clean?

I had heard that the Toyota plant was clean but I still expected your typical industrial dust and grime. And smoke. I definitely expected smoke, at least to some degree. As the vans that were carrying me and the other bloggers who had been invited to tour the Toyota plant pulled up, I saw the factory, huge and white dominating the landscape in front of us and I was first struck by the fact that the air over the factory was completely free from smoke.

I was told that the factory had a filtering system on it that limited emissions. I don’t think this struck me fully until, on the flight home, I saw 2 other factories from the air, both with a huge gray cloud of smoke polluting the air around the factory. There is certainly more than one way to protect our children and I’m glad that Toyota is looking at the bigger picture.

Toyota has a huge emphasis on recycling and they have even been working on a reforrestation project to plant native Indiana plants and trees to select locations on the TMMI property. The inside of the factory was surprisingly clean as well. We were taken on 2 trams through the facility and everything looked very clean and well maintained.

Is a Toyota Factory Safe?

As moms, we were all concerned about the safety of the plant so when we saw several signs around the factory saying “Only You Can Prevent Mutilations” we had to wonder what was going on. Mel from Mama Bzz spoke up and asked what it meant but we all had the question on our mind. As it turns out, mutilations refer to the car, NOT the employees. The employees are required to wear special clothing that is free from anything that might scratch the cars, such as belt buckles and buttons. As an alternative, they use belts that fasten with velcro and clothes that have rubber buttons on them.

We learned that Toyota definitely looks out for their employees. A lot of the work manufacturing the cars is done by hand, which surprised me. I think I was expecting more machine to actually do the work, and while machines are used, they are used to assist them employees who do most of the assembly and detail work. Each employee is put on a rotation so they don’t stay in a job that is hard on any one part of their body for too long. Toyota encourages stretching during the shift and has onsite physical therapists and medical facilities in the event that an employee finds any particular job straining a particular muscle.

24 Hour Daycare

The Toyota plant is really like a small city. There are banks, gyms, and dining areas inside the plant. An onside medical center and recreational facilities are nearby and an onsite daycare center is available that provides subsidized childcare.  We had the chance to visit the daycare, which runs 24 hours a day. The facility itself was amazing. It was very clean and provides great developmental and educational opportunities for the children involved.

I have mixed feelings on running a daycare 24 hours a day but I do think it’s a great service for working families, especially single moms, if they need it. The kids are actually kept awake at night so they are on the same schedule as their parents. The director told us that the only different between the day shift and the night shift is that during the day they use sunscreen and at night they use bug spray. She said it’s amazing to come to the daycare center at 2:00 a.m. and see all the kids running and playing outside. I’m sure that having kids on the same schedule makes it so much easier for employees to work the night shift, and as the director said, kids ARE resilient. My doubts stem from the fact that I’m a firm believer in “early to bed, early to rise” (at least as far as my kids go. My own habits are another story entirely). I’ve read several studies about how important natural light is for children so in an ideal world, children would be given every opportunity to follow their body’s natural rhythm and sleep at night. We don’t live in an ideal world though and having the opportunity to spend time with a parent who needs to work during the night shift probably far outweighs a few years of following a different sleep schedule.

The daycare does some wonderful things for the families in their care, including creating memory books so working parents don’t miss out on all of the things their children are doing during the day (or night).

A Sense of Community

Toyota really makes an effort to not only create a sense of community among their employees but to involve themselves in the local community as well. Toyota sponsors several educational programs in the local schools and is involved with several local organizations. I was so impressed by the passion that everyone at Toyota has for what they do. The company as a whole really felt like a tight knit group and that is hard to find now. My husband is job hunting and I have rarely seen a company who treats their employees as well as Toyota does. The president of the plant met with us and was very upfront that they did have quite a decrease in production as a result of the recalls that happened recently. He said that rather than laying off workers, which is standard practice in nearly any industry, they chose to use the time for training and maintenance and keep their most valuable resource which is their staff of qualified, well-trained employees. Why can’t more companies be like that?

I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to see what Toyota is all about and meet some of their employees. I’ve been Sienna spotting while driving, picking out every Sienna I see and thinking “Hey, I know where you were made!” I’m sure that makes me a geek but it amuses me.

Disclosure: My travel and accommodations were paid for by Toyota so that I could visit TMMI. All thoughts and opinions are my own.