Free weekend? Now you can visit the Toyota factory virtually
Industrial tourism – visiting factories, steelworks, production plants – is becoming more and more popular. Sometimes, however, the most interesting factories are located on another continent. The Japanese manufacturer decided to remedy this and offers (also) a virtual tour.
Recently, the Volkswagen plant in Greater Poland opened its doors to visitors on the occasion of its 30th birthday. There was huge interest in visiting the factories in Antoninek and Września. The trips lasted throughout the holidays, because industrial tourism is an increasingly popular way of spending free time.
Meanwhile, some of the key factories are located far away, and few people have the opportunity to reach them. This can, at least in some way, be remedied. Toyota has decided to provide a virtual tour of plants where over 10,000 cars are manufactured. cars per day.
Thanks to the virtual platform, fans of this type of sightseeing around the world can see how cars are made from a roll of steel to a finished vehicle. Stamping, welding, painting, assembly – these are just some of the production stages that you can take a closer look at.
What can you see?
From the moment of forming the steel under a pressure of 1,600 tons, through welding in 4,000 places, until the finished vehicle leaves the production line. Tour participants will learn about all stages of production that make up one car, which is made of 30,000. parts. More than 10,000 of them are manufactured in the company’s Japanese factories. daily.
Each stage of Toyota car production was presented with interesting data, detailed visualizations and appropriate narration. Such a virtual trip is an experience different from a live visit, but equally rich. Because traditional plant tours focus mainly on the assembly stage. For safety reasons, the process can only be observed from a distance. Meanwhile, a virtual tour complements the experience and allows you to take a closer look at certain processes.
Toyota factories are people and their stories
The project was led by Akiko Kita, group manager at the Toyota Kaikan Museum. Its creators emphasize that special attention was paid to people when creating the trip. In fact, the design team interviewed over 40 employees to capture as much realism as possible during the production process.
The idea for a virtual tour of the Toyota factory arose when the Covid-19 pandemic forced the suspension of tours of Toyota plants in July 2021. The new form makes it possible to continue the tradition of the company, which welcomed 130,000 guests every year who wanted to see how cars are made. Now globally, not only locally, in Japan.
