DFW Wait Times

Yeah, I was put on the list for an OT (switched to OT+) in June. I have yet to hear anything without first sending an email myself. But my sales associate has been responsive in answering my emails. I ask for an update every month or so.
 
I got my GX from Sewell in May. They have an enormously long "interest" list (the most recent I heard from my sales guy a couple months ago was still at about 3k people. It's not technically a true order waitlist, which would undoubtably be much shorter, but it's an approximation depending on what trim, color, and options you want or are willing to accept as to when its your turn for an allocation.
 
I got on the list at PP Plano back in August of 23 and have been waiting for a very specific spec (OT+ Atomic w/ black roof & Chateau), but none has come through for me. A couple months back, I did get offered some other ones that were close, but not perfect. I declined.

So I've recently gotten my name on the list of other dealers within driving distance. If I was able to order exactly what I want and just had to wait on an allocation, that'd be fine. The fact that Lexus sends what it sends and I just have to sit around and pray is madness. I've certainly had a wandering eye over the past 1.5 years of waiting, even at vehicles that are significantly more expensive, but Lexus knows they have a great product so they're not incentivized to "fix" anything in the process of buying one. The truth of it is that this has been the most painful car buying experience I've ever had in 30 years.
 
[snip] ...but Lexus knows they have a great product so they're not incentivized to "fix" anything in the process of buying one. [/snip]
In fact I believe that Lexus/Toyota is incentivized to keep things the way they are. My belief, although I haven't seen it documented anywhere, is that their kanban manufacturing process is able to be much more efficient without custom orders and that allows Lexus/Toyota to stay very lean (and keep costs down) by having the bare minimum of on-hand parts inventory.
 
In fact I believe that Lexus/Toyota is incentivized to keep things the way they are. My belief, although I haven't seen it documented anywhere, is that their kanban manufacturing process is able to be much more efficient without custom orders and that allows Lexus/Toyota to stay very lean (and keep costs down) by having the bare minimum of on-hand parts inventory.
Yeah, I've heard basically the same thing with regards to their manufacturing process. I'm not sure if I understand it...although I'm not a process engineer. If the idea is they're going to build things in batches in order keep parts arriving just in time and tooling changes at a minimum, I don't see how tying a specific build to a specific purchasing person makes any impact on that. Just have the purchasing person wait until the factory has the right parts and such in order to build their car? What am I missing?
 
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Yeah, I've heard basically the same thing with regards to their manufacturing process. I'm not sure if I understand it...although I'm not a process engineer. If the idea is they're going to build things in batches in order keep parts arriving just in time and tooling changes at a minimum, I don't see how tying a specific build to a specific purchasing person makes any impact on that. Just have the purchasing person wait until the factory has the right parts and such in order to build their car? What am I missing?
I think - and once again this is just speculation on my part, I too am not a process engineer but a software engineer - that any one assignment of a specific build to a dealer wouldn't affect things, but the sum of all the custom orders from all the dealers in the world could induce a lot of variability that their lean manufacturing couldn't account for. Plus, I believe Toyota/Lexus feels they can squeeze out more profit from customers by "over optioning" their builds. I'm going to be picking up my GX on Friday and I can tell you there's about $1200 in options that I wouldn't have ordered if I were allowed to custom order.
 
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