Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantage: the Toyota Philosophy and Its Effects

Today, Toyota is the world's third largest manufacturer of automobiles in terms of both unit sales and net sales. It is also the largest Japanese automotive manufacturer, producing more than 5.5 million vehicles per year, equivalent to one every six seconds. See Appendix 1 for a list of its guiding principles. Appendix 2 depicts excerpts from the company’s 2000 annual report showing their main goals for that year. The company has 12 manufacturing plants in Japan and approximately 54 manufacturing companies in 27 countries throughout the world. These plants produce vehicles and components under the Lexus and Toyota brand names and employ about one quarter of a million people worldwide. In total Toyota vehicles are marketed and sold in more than 160 countries and regions with the automotive business, including sales and finance of the vehicles, accounting for more than 90% of the company's total sales. Appendix 3 shows worldwide sales and appendix 4 shows the models produced in North American Toyota plants. North Americanization of Toyota Since the late 1980’s Toyota had made several moves that showed their commitment to what management called the North Americanization of the company. The idea was to increase car sales in the lucrative North American market by also introducing manufacturing plants that produced parts and assembled whole vehicles for

* Toyota is best known for environmentally safe, quality, reliability, durability and value for money.

Yet, the public perceptions may be at odds with the objective measures. In Toyota’s case, there have been indications that the quality level of the company’s products had fallen off in a span of few years. There are changes that have taken place during a period when most of the company’s close competitors, such as Fords, were producing more cost-effective and efficient automobiles. In addition, the company’s unique production approach and the emphasis on continuous improvement and learning coupled with a matrix structure are key reasons for the company’s leadership in the cat manufacturing industry. Toyota’s Production Systems (TPS) was founded in the principles of “Just-in-time. This approach has less opportunity for slack resources and focuses of the benefits of efficiency on the part of employees and reduction on waste resources (Griffin and Gregory, 5). Further, Toyota Company enacts its production system with the assistance of its human resources strategies, culture, and organizational structure. Toyota’s Production System emphasizes on learning and modesty when it comes to assessing past success and differentiated them from

Toyota is a leading company, and for over 70 years. It has been expanding business all over the world and

In the vehicle and engine businesses we have achieved a top-class level of quality and productivity within the Toyota Group and are contributing to Toyota Motor Corporation's car production.

This business brief will discuss Autoliv, a Fortune 500 company who manufactures automotive safety components (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). Autoliv has over 80 plants in more than 32 countries, all of which run on a lean manufacturing system, which is referred to as “Autoliv Production System (APS) (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). Toyota pioneered the principles that the APS is based on (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). Another A lean system allows businesses to improve operations, by getting rid of the “unwanted waste”, such as overproduction, transportation, waiting, motion, inventory, defects, etc (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013).

or decades, Toyota’s success in the marketplace has been admired by business practitioners and executives alike. The automaker is the envy of others within the automobile industry, but the company is also considered to be the symbol of excellence in business in general. The firm has been the focus of research in academia. The power of Toyota has been attributed to its two distinct core values:

This is a great company that has been very successful over the past couple of decades. Toyota has surpassed Ford and is on its way to surpassing General Motors. Toyota still has its challenges and that is what the External Analysis will show (Hill, Jones p. c61-c72).

Toyota Motor Corporation is one of the most important automaker that has been operational since 1973, based in Japan. The company has gone global and their operations are massive such that it trades in the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The company started as a department of the human resources that used to employ 317,734, before it become the biggest automobile due to the huge production that it used to make from the huge labour. It was until the operations were now very stable that the automaker became globally known and being the largest conglomerate in the world. Toyota was able to attain a high number of customers who were

Toyota’s manufacturing techniques, the specifics of the Toyota production system have allowed the company to operate at a greater level of efficiency than its competitors. The lastly is about that continuous improvement. Thus, Toyota has been able to sustain a competitive advantage by utilizing a tangible resource that is rare and not easily imitable.

“Toyota will lead the way to the future of mobility, enriching lives around the world with the safest and most responsible ways of moving people. Through our commitment to quality, constant innovation and respect for the planet, we aim to exceed expectations and be rewarded with a smile. We will meet our challenging goals by engaging the talent and passion of

Vision Statement: "To be the most successful and respected car company in America." This has been true as worldwide in the past five years Toyota have place number 1 or number 2 of cars sales worldwide. Toyota Motor Corporation’s organizational structure is based on different business operations of the company around the world. As one of the world’s leading automobile manufacturers, Toyota employs its organizational structure to support business goals and strategic direction. The structure Toyota have is also linked to traditional organizational structures mainly use in Japanese businesses.

Toyota known as one of the best companies in the way of producing quality products. They need to have strength communication with their customers to return its old position.

Toyota is a key player in global automotive market. Its structure constitutes if various production plants in different locations and a very strong branding which helps it capture a major market share. Like other enterprises, Toyota has several strengths and weakness which makes it what it is now. Toyota heavily invests in Research and development which helps it come up reputable product line which is spread out throughout the world because of its strengthening global distribution network however its recent product recalling, loose grip in key geographic areas and wrong allocation of resources shows that even a strong brand like Toyota has its weaknesses.

Toyota company has been able to create an image in the market. They have been successful because of high-quality service to its customers. Whenever there was a problem related to the product, the organization never tried to hide the issues. They always addressed to the people even though that impact its image. Another important factor that made the Toyota company successful is the quality. Though it is expensive compared to other automobiles, it is very reliable and dependable. Customers are always loyal to this brand as they have a high reselling value.