Global Crisis Management : Toyota Motors Corporation Recall

Toyota has hit the headlines over the years over the defects in several of their models which has sent it on a public relations and safety campaigns relating to its vehicles. Notably is the Toyota safety campaign in North America for certain models of Toyota as well as Lexus brands concerning the floor mat entrapment of accelerator pedals, later on it extended to other models in November 2009.

In 2009 Toyota encountered a public backlash after the discovery of a potentially catastrophic engineering defect among its brand of automobiles including its best-selling Corolla and Camry models. This led to a massive and global recall of approximately 10 million units a year later. The engineering defect caused the models to accelerate out of control and put their drivers and other

During a crisis here at Totoya automotive manufacturer, our goal will be to communicate facts as quickly as possible. We will form a Crisis Response Team at our Regional location, and at all of our manufacturing and sale sites. We will strive to update information as circumstances change, to ensure the safety of the community and the continued operations of automotive manufacturing. We will be mindful of how we communicate in a crisis. Our approach will affect the global reputation of our company operations and vehicles. We realize that in a crisis, people will presume us to have more information than we may actually have. At Toyota,

As of the date of this report, Takata is one of the largest recalls of any consumer product in U.S. history. Takata is an automotive parts company based in Japan. It has production facilities on the United States. More than 20 million vehicles are subject to recall in other countries. These events prompted Takata company to commission the independent Takata

As if this weren’t enough, quality problems mounted week after week. Only months later in February 2010, the NHTSA revealed that it had received claims citing another life threatening defect in the break system for the Toyota Prius. More than 400 thousand Prius recalls resulted. In April of 2010, customers reported handling issues in the Lexus brand which resulted in another recall of 9,400 Lexus cars and a “Don’t Buy: Safety Risk” rating from Consumer Reports. Also in April, the company voluntarily recalled Siennas to address a problem with corrosion on a spare tire cable. Later that month, Toyota voluntarily recalled 2003 Sequoia SUVs to improve the stability controls. 2010 Tacomas were also recalled for defective front drive shafts. Once the quality icon, Toyota had hit a really low point; so low that credit

In May of 2006, The Toyota Motor Corporation initiated a recall of nearly one million vehicles around the world to replace faulty parts that could cause drivers to lose control of the steering wheel. The recall affected vehicles across 10 models, including the popular Prius. The intermediate shafts and sliding yokes in the recalled cars lacked the necessary strength and could distort or crack under strong pressure, causing drivers to lose control of the steering wheel, according to Toyota (ConsumerAffairs.Com). Owners of these vehicles were allowed to have these defects repaired at the cost of Toyota and required approximately on hour to complete (News.com.au).

Of high concern to both our team and consumers looking to purchase a new vehicle is the issue with vehicle recalls. As cited from the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) , vehicle recalls have trended upward over the past several years to 51 million vehicles being affected in 2015, 64 million in 2014, 22.1 million in 2013, and 16.5 million in 201226. Within Toyota’s competitors, Toyota is the fourth-largest number of recalls number of vehicles in 2014, totaling just 5.9 million vehicles . For a perspective, General Motors recalled 28.83 million vehicles over the same span, Honda recalled 9.04 million, and Ford recalled 4.78 million vehicles. Though Toyota has had a history with large recalls, more recently they seem to

In July 2007, Mattel discovered that a substantial amount of their toys were contaminated with toxic lead paint after shipping out millions of toys to supply the upcoming holiday season. A crisis is defined as “the perception of an unpredictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes” (Coombs, 2012). Under this standard, Mattel were facing a crisis by violating their stakeholder’s expectation of product quality standards. Mattel effectively managed this lead crisis in the following ways: Mattel open a self-investigation on their supply chain and recalled 1.5 million toys to ensure children and the public safety; Mattel had a crisis management

“I fear the pace at which we have grown may have been to quick. I would like to point out here that Toyota’s priority has traditionally been the following: First, Safety; Second, Quality and Third, Volume. These priorities became confused, and we were not able to stop, think and make improvements as much as we were able to before, and our basic stance to listen to customers’ voices to make better products has weakened somewhat. We pursued growth over the speed at which were able to develop our people and our organization, and we should sincerely be mindful of that. I regret that this has resulted in the safety issues described in the recalls we face today, and I am deeply sorry for any accidents that Toyota drivers have experienced.” (Greto, M., Schotter, A., & TeaGarden, M., 2010)

Without any warning, Johnson & Johnson, a parent company of McNeil Consumer Products Company, endured negative media coverage that included information about the crisis before the organization knew about it. In addition, the company had to explain to the world, why its trusted product was suddenly killing people (Harris et al, n.d.). Initially, the company was blindsided by the incident and subsequently formed a seven-member strategy team to handle the crisis, protect consumers, save their product, and confront the negative media coverage (Harris et al, n.d.).

Crisis management encompasses responding to a negative event that has occurred unexpectedly. In this regard, crisis management requires decisions to be made in a relatively short time frame. In general, there are three elements of a crisis including a threat, surprise and a short time frame for decision making. Dealing with a crisis may be challenging and organizations are required to have a crisis management plan to enable them deal with the effects that unexpected negative events or situations may create. In particular, crisis communication is vital in reassuring the stakeholders and the public of their personal safety as well as the safety of their investment. A crisis can harm a good reputation of an organization and create panic among

The automotive company is no stranger to this, as it has had a vast history of incriminating scandals. For instance, the Ford Pinto was prone to catching fire in rear-end collisions. Various Toyota models contained a flaw where the accelerators would become jammed. Most devastating were the over 100 deaths due to faulty ignition switches on Chevrolet Cobalt and

An inconvenient truth arises when consumer products fail to operate as they were intended to. When purchasing a large item such as an automobile, consumers anticipate their investments to function properly and safely. However as witnessed over the years, producers and manufacturers are hit with product recalls frequently. A product recall is the process of retrieving and replacing defective goods for consumers. When a company recalls a product, the company or manufacturer absorb the cost of replacing and fixing defective products for consumers. For large companies, the costs of repairing faulty merchandise can accumulate to multi-billion dollar losses. Notably car manufacturers Toyota (TM), General Motors (GM), and Honda (HMC)

Despite, Toyota’s philosophies of good service, and daily improvement, over nine million Toyota cars were recalled. Toyota's management began to be investigated by NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration). Team C will address issues with Toyota products and the strategies that the company used to resolve their problems. The paper will focus on four functions of management and the internal and external factors that will affect management. Toyota needed to evaluate their planning, organizing, leading, and controlling functions. This is the responsibility of management internally.

As we all know, we are starting danger administration arrangement for this month. so we are attempting to perform every single stride to make this danger administration impeccable, for this we require feedback from the individuals who are consistently connected with those risks.