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AD&P; > October 2013 > FEATURE > 2014 Toyota Tundra: Engineer It Like You Own It > Gary S. Vasilash > gsv@autofeldguide.com Which brings us to Mike Sweers. Sweers works at the Toyota Technical Center (TTC) in Ann Arbor. Sweers, formerly the vice president of Interiors at TTC (the relevance of this can be found in one of the photo captions on p. 51), is the chief engineer for the 2014 Tundra. instead, it is a Tundra Double Cab with an eight-foot bed), but he actually uses a truck on his farm. So he has the empathy, he knows what a truck ought to be, he has ideas as to what it could be, and he's tested possible approaches. In other words, design thinking methods were used in creating the '14 Tundra. (Sweers' wife and kids also drive trucks.) What does that have to do with design thinking? It so happens that in addition to his day job, Sweers owns a farm in Williamston, Michigan. He is a farmer. Hay. Dairy cattle. Maple syrup. A working farm. A family farm. He not only drives a truck (not surprising for a guy who is the chief engineer on a truck program; had he been the chief engineer for a Camry, he'd undoubtedly drive one of those; Sweers talks about the rear bumper on his truck (the one on the farm, not the '14 Tundra). He admits that what is on the '14 is a result of "a personal request from me." Sweers has high school kids work on his farm. One not great consequence of that is that he's had to replace the bumper on his truck three times: hitching up equipment to the back is not all that easy a task when you're not as experienced as you might be. (although it is certainly benefcial if designers do follow this methodology). 50 The frst thing that he wanted was a thicker gauge material so that it would be able to withstand more abuse, so they designed a truss to provide additional rigidity. But then, Sweers explains, they went further, and designed the rear bumper in three sections that are bolted together. In the event of a crunch, it may be that just one section needs to be replaced rather than the whole thing. This, he says, is of great beneft to the savings accounts of Tundra buyers. (Another beneft he cites is in the warehouses where parts are inventoried: less space is required to accommodate the smaller sections.) In addition to which: there is a standard backup camera on the '14 model. He's really interested in not having to replace rear bumpers, as plenty other people probably are, as well.